RETA: Distributed Leadership for Middle School Mathematics Education: Content Area Leadership Expertise in Practice

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The investigators propose a mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative)study of distributed content leadership in middle school mathematics.There is little research on what content, pedagogical, and diagnosticknowledge leaders must have to effectively assist teachers inimplementing demands of rigorous mathematics instruction and studentlearning. This research builds on prior research of the investigatorswho examined distributed leadership at the elementary school level.However, this research will go much deeper into defining andunderstanding the leaders and the roles they play. Much of the project is devoted to developing instruments to measuremathematics content leadership as distributed in middle schools.Specifically, the team proposes to develop, test, and validatemeasurement instruments of content leadership practice and knowledge andto examine how content leadership affects how teachers teach. They alsopropose to test whether content leadership can be learned. All of thiswork will be conducted in the context of a Mathematics and SciencePartnership (MSP) Teacher Institute for the 21sth Century site. Intellectual Merit: The proposed program of work fills a major gap in the knowledge base bygenerating new information and evidence about content leadershipknowledge and practices as they relate to improvement in mathematicseducation. The senior research team brings together experienced scholarsand teachers from mathematics, mathematics education, teacher learning,leadership, policy, and statistics. The research is divided into two main parts. The first will focus onthe development, piloting, and validation of instrumentation foridentifying and documenting content area leadership practice for middleschool mathematics. The second part will study the nature (i.e., thewhat, the how and the why) of content area leadership practice formiddle school mathematics and its relations to (a) leadershipdevelopment and (b) classroom teachers and teaching. Broader Impact: This work may have significant broad impact by generating usableknowledge and methodological tools that will be of considerable interestto MSPs and Institute Partnerships and to the school systems around thenation. By focusing on content leadership in urban schools, this workwill contribute to improving mathematics education for urban youth, whohave historically been underserved by many school systems.