Developing Leadership - Middle School Mathematics Teacher Education Project

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This two year urban and rural project will: o design and pilot test an instrument to collect data to determine middle school teachers' comprehension about middle school mathematical concepts and to construct mathematical profiles of these teachers; o use this instrument to conduct the interviews of urban and rural middle school teachers; o construct in-service mathematics institutes, for teams of elementary school teachers and principals, based on the teachers' profiles and the principal investigators research on children's proportional reasoning and problem solving; o run the newly designed summer institute with academic year follow-up in the urban and rural settings in which the teachers were tested. The principal investigators are Professor Thomas Post of the University of Minnesota and Professor Merlyn Behr of Northern Illinois University. The PIs will administer two types of written examinations and one oral interview to teachers from the Minneapolis, Minnesota and DeKalb, Illinois areas. The examination topics will include concepts of number and arithmetical operations, rational numbers, proportional reasoning, geometry, probability and statistics, pre-algebra, problem solving and technology. The PIs will develop and select those learning activities for the teachers' institute which focus on higher order thinking skills and understanding processes related to mathematical teaching. The summer institutes will run during the summer of 1988. The academic year follow-ups include several on-site visits and mini-conferences.