SURVEY OF U.S. MIDDLE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS TEACHERS AND TEACHING

在过去的25年里，美国教育政策的三个主要目标是：培养更有知识的教师，实施更具挑战性的课程，以及在课堂上培养更有雄心的教学。然而，尽管在过去几十年里有大量的政策指导、实地努力和研究，但美国课堂教师和教学质量的全面和代表性的画像却很少。相反，对这些主题的大多数研究都是在小样本或非代表性样本的情况下进行的，因此很难确定在实现这三个目标方面取得了哪些进展。与国家教育进步评估近50年来跟踪的学生成绩不同，典型美国学生的课堂经历仍然模糊不清。为了解决这个问题，为期4年的描述性研究将开始，系统地跟踪中学数学课堂的关键教学指标，具体来说，教师的数学知识，课程设置，以及提供给学生的数学教学的性质。为了启动这项研究，研究小组将在2015年收集600名美国中学数学教师的全国代表性样本数据。将在2005- 2006年进行的一次调查的基础上进行一次书面调查，以便对教师的课程使用和数学知识进行长期比较。研究小组还将记录这些教师中的一部分教师的教学录像并进行评分，以便既能描述当前的教学，又能与1999年TIMSS录像研究期间所收集的课程进行比较。调查和视频数据集都可以作为未来教学研究的参考，例如，调查学生参与数学思想发展是否随时间而变化的研究。研究团队将使用新旧技术来完成这项研究。邮寄调查将包括利用教师的数学知识进行教学的现有项目，或教师在向儿童提供数学教学时所利用的专业知识。为了进行视频研究，他们将邮寄平板电脑给教师记录他们自己的教学，并通过YouTube视频提供录制指导。课程的结果将使用数学教学质量（MQI）工具进行评分。MQI测量数学课堂的关键维度，包括用于数学任务的课堂时间比例，课程内容的数学完整性以及学生参与数学思想发展的性质。调查的视频和数据将提供给其他研究人员，以便使用其他方法和观察工具进行评分。教师、家长和学生将被要求同意提供他们的课堂视频。这项研究主要是描述性的，许多其他同类研究也是如此。然而，描述美国的教学范围可以对该领域产生深远的影响，就像十多年前TIMSS视频研究一样。建立大规模研究教师和教学的方法将有助于评估和监测实现广泛的国家目标的进展情况。

For the past 25 years, three major goals have animated U.S. educational policy: developing more knowledgeable teachers, implementing more challenging curricula, and fostering more ambitious instruction in classrooms. Yet despite volumes of policy guidance, on-the-ground effort, and research over the past decades, few comprehensive and representative portraits of teacher and teaching quality in U.S. classrooms exist. Instead, most research into these topics has been conducted with small or nonrepresentative samples, with the result that it is difficult to ascertain what, if any, progress has been made toward the three goals. Unlike student achievement, which the National Assessment of Educational Progress has tracked for almost 50 years, the classroom experiences of the typical U.S. student remain obscure. To address this issue, the 4-year descriptive study will begin by systematically tracking key instructional indicators in middle school mathematics classrooms, specifically, teachers' mathematical knowledge, the curriculum in place, and the nature of mathematics instruction offered to students. To initiate this line of research, the research team will collect data in 2015 from a national representative sample of 600 U.S. middle school mathematics teachers. A written survey will build on one conducted in 2005-06, allowing for the comparison over time of teachers' curriculum use and mathematical knowledge. The research team will also record and score videos of instruction from a subset of these teachers, enabling both a description of current instruction and a comparison to lessons captured during the 1999 TIMSS video study. Both the survey and video datasets can serve as referents for future studies of instruction, for instance, studies investigating whether student participation in the development of mathematical ideas has changed over time. The research team will use both old and new technologies to complete the study. The mail survey will consist of existing items that tap teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, or the professional knowledge teachers draw upon in providing mathematics instruction to children. To conduct the video study, they will mail tablets for teachers to record their own instruction, and guidance on taping will be provided via YouTube video. The lessons that result will be scored using the Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI) instrument. The MQI measures key dimensions of mathematics classrooms, including the proportion of class time spent on mathematical tasks, the mathematical integrity of lesson content, and the nature of student participation in the development of mathematical ideas. Video and data from the survey will be made available to other researchers for scoring with other methods and observation instruments. Teachers, parents and students will be asked to consent to their classroom videos being made available. The study is largely descriptive, as are many others of its kind. However, describing the range of U.S. instruction can have a profound effect on the field, much as the TIMSS video studies did over a decade ago. Establishing methodologies for studying teachers and teaching at scale will contribute to efforts to evaluate and monitor progress toward broad-reaching national goals.