Collaborative Research: Co-Designing for Statewide Alignment of a Vision for High Quality Mathematics Instruction

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Mathematics teaching and learning is influenced by policy and practice at the state, district, and school levels. To support large-scale change, it is important for high-quality mathematics instruction to be aligned and cohesive across each level of the education system. This can be supported through regional partnerships among state, district, and school-based leaders, mathematics teachers, education researchers, and mathematicians. Such partnerships create instructional tools and resources to document the vision for instruction. For example, teams can work together to create instructional frameworks for each grade band that describe standards, mathematics teaching, and units for teaching. This project will develop a process for creating a shared, state-wide vision of high-quality mathematics instruction. It will also develop and study the resources to implement that vision at the state, district, and school levels. In addition, the project will investigate a collaborative process of designing and implementing high-quality mathematics instruction at a state level.This project will develop a shared vision of high-quality mathematics instruction intended to improve systemic coherence during the implementation of education innovations. The project uses a research-practice partnership with a design-based implementation research design. To examine and support implementation of the vision, partners will continue a process of developing instructional frameworks, research and practice briefs, as well as additional resources as needed by stakeholders in the system. Engaging partners at all levels of the system is a central component of developing the shared vision of instruction. This project includes three major research questions. First, what are visions of high-quality mathematics instruction held by educators at different levels of a state educational system? Second, in what ways do educators' visions of high-quality mathematics instruction mediate their use of implementation resources in practice? Finally, in what ways do educators’ visions of high-quality mathematics instruction mediate their participation in the co-design of implementation resources? An activity theory framework is used to understand the interactions between partners at different levels in the system and the creation of artifacts during the design process. The research methods for the study are situated in design-based research to capture the conjectures, instructional resources, design processes, and outcomes of the process. The project will use case studies of partner districts, data gathering from interactions with partners, artifacts of the design process, and other documentation to understand how the vision is created and enacted in different settings and to develop an empirically supported design framework and methodology for implementing STEM innovations at scale that centralizes a shared instructional vision. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.