Vanderbilt's researchers are focusing on how all of those issues affect
mathematics and science education in middle schools.
Led by Cobb and McClain, the mathematics education researchers, working
with classroom teachers, are investigating students' understandings of statistical
reasoning. Next academic year, they will conduct a 10-week classroom teaching
experiment in a seventh-grade classroom at Meigs Middle School in Nashville.
The process of developing instructional materials for a teaching experiment
involves anticipating a possible route that students' learning might follow
and formulating conjectures about ways to support it. Based on careful analysis
of what students are and are not coming to understand, these conjectures
and the instructional materials are then revised on a day-to-day basis.
The activities in the instructional sequence will capitalize on the use
of real-world contexts in order to provide a link between the mathematics
inside and the mathematics outside the classroom.
After field testing the instructional sequences during the classroom teaching
experiments, Cobb and McClain intend to work with a number of seventh-grade
and eighth-grade teachers to investigate how they learn to use the instructional
sequences effectively in their classrooms. From there, they will extract
a few basic principles or guidelines that other educators can use to develop
more effective mathematics programs.
The science team, led by Duschl, and working with seven teachers from Pennsylvania,
Florida and Tennessee, is testing revisions of a six-week instructional
sequence on acids and bases.
"We've modified the unit so that there is a strong emphasis on students'
being able to build mental, pictorial, physical and symbolic models,"
Collins said. "For example, one of the first things they do is taste
common foods like lemons which are acidic and draw pictures of what they
think the acids look like. Later, they build physical models of acids using
toothpicks and marshmallows. Not only do they get to build these models,
they're also encouraged to talk about their models and defend their design
choices. Having the students determine how to safely dispose of some liquids
whose identities are now known, and defend their disposal method to the
class and to a fictitious hazardous materials department makes the setting
for instruction realistic."
Collins said she is concerned with the conditions that facilitate and hinder
teachers as they design, implement and evaluate new instructional sequences
that promote understanding big ideas. Her focus is on teachers' knowledge
and belief and how these change. This spring, as the science unit on acids
and bases is being tested in classrooms, information is being gathered about
the teachers' thinking about the nature of science, how students learn,
what are appropriate roles for students and teachers in a classroom that
promotes understanding, and what are appropriate ways to gather information
about student achievement.
"The type of mathematics and science learning we're talking about here
is very different from what happens in many classrooms today," Collins
said. "What we are interested in is the design of classrooms that provide
students opportunities to develop deep understanding in mathematics and
science. To do this we need to know more about what supports and what hinders
student understanding - the instructional materials, the instructional sequence,
the roles for students, the roles for teachers, the assessment methods,
the school support and other factors we expect to uncover as we work toward
a set of design principles for classroom instruction."
Beth Monin