Importance

Teachers often do not have the time or means to interact with other teachers, to plan their teaching, and reflect on their enactment of a common curriculum. We’re integrating tools for teacher collaboration into an existing digital environment designed for student collaboration that hosts the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP) problem-based mathematics curriculum. The goal is to inform research and development about digital teacher and student collaborative environments and improve teaching and learning outcomes.

With Michigan State University, we’re embedding teacher networking supports and features within a digital curriculum platform designed to help middle school students deepen and make visible their understanding of mathematics through collaboration. These supports include methods of easy, just-in-time access to teacher guides, curricular materials, planning documents, and student work within districts with ubiquitous ability to comment and discuss online.

The digital teacher collaborative environment will be designed to support teachers in professional discourse to support student learning and related teacher practices. Teachers can share their successes and struggles, develop relationships with experienced teachers, engage in ongoing and daily professional learning to improve student learning, and participate in collaborative teacher inquiry of their teaching practices. Project research focuses on how educators and researchers can improve the depth, breadth, and productivity of teacher learning and practice in middle grades mathematics classrooms using problem-based curriculum materials.

Research

Our research is guided by the following question:

• How do teachers in networks access, generate, use, and share teaching resources (including classroom artifacts) as needed to support mathematics teaching (planning, enactment, and reflection of student thinking)?

Publications