Collaborative Research: Using Networked Improvement Communities to Scale Up Program Transformation for Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation

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This project aims to serve the national interest of improving mathematics teacher preparation by studying a networked improvement community (NIC) working to transform secondary mathematics teacher programs at universities aligned with national recommendations for mathematics teacher preparation. The U.S. faces a significant shortage of well-prepared secondary mathematics teachers, particularly in the highest-need districts. This project has the potential to impact over 2,500 preservice mathematics teachers during the four years of the project, meeting the IUSE program’s intent of broadening participation in STEM education through research. Beginning with 43 secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs, this project intends to expand to engage and study at least 65 programs in the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership (MTEP 2.0) network, including the addition of 11 under-resourced institutions and/or minority-serving institutions, by 2025 to increase the number and diversity of well-prepared beginning mathematics teachers, while foregrounding issues of equity and access.Recruiting a diverse pool of future teachers and infusing equity and justice are core to the transformation activities of the programs in this project. The goals of this project include examination of how a collaborative structure of NICs supports, accelerates, and sustains secondary mathematics teacher preparation program transformation efforts. Variations in existing structures related to roles of individuals, the culture for change, and the decision-making processes for leadership are also to be investigated. The project will be operationalized through creation of four types of hubs (Administrative, Research, Support, and Outreach). The NICs use Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to iteratively prototype, test, and refine interventions. The project’s research is intended to identify which supports within the collaborative structure of NICs enable change agents to effectively facilitate transformation efforts. Research methodologies will be largely qualitative with analyses using Dedoose (a web-based application for organization and analysis of research data), to support systematic procedures for coding and categorizing data. Interview transcripts and project documentation data will be analyzed using an approach that closely follows methods explicated by Miles et al. (Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook, 2014) and a constant comparative approach based on grounded theory, starting with the project’s theory of change related to the primary drivers: Change Agents, Knowledge Building, Knowledge Sharing, Network Building, Responding to Context, and Outreach. Since each NIC has stated aims and driver diagrams (representing strategies toward achieving the aim), those dimensions will frame initial coding efforts. The NICs are categorized as Beginning, Progressing, Sustaining, or Re-establishing. From each of these four categories, the project will purposefully select representative cases to target for annual interviews, rotating the selection of case studies. These qualitative data will be paired with quantitative data, such as surveys of the number of program completers and program progress toward meeting the MTEP Guiding Principles, to create an image of progress and actions. The knowledge generated from this project is expected to provide a national model for use of school-university partnerships and the NIC design to transform secondary mathematics teacher preparation in support of more equitable outcomes for mathematics. The approach also has the potential to be adapted to other areas of teacher preparation or educational improvement. Results, including cases, are to be disseminated in collaboration with the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, at conferences and in newsletters, and research publications in journals such as Mathematics Teacher Educator and magazines such as Mathematical Association of America Notes and American Mathematical Society Notices. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. Partial funding is from the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program.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.