Post on 20-Jan-2016
Strategic Education Research Partnership
WT Grant Research-Practice Partnership Meeting
April 30, 2014
Starting Small
Not a theory: a stage of problem solving
• Word Generation in Boston vs. Word Generation in New York City
How do you know…
Evidence: Word Generation positive effect on vocabulary acquisition; positive reports from teachers.
Partnerships must balance theory and politics
• 5x8 card • internal coherence protocol
Case Example
Decline in middle grades math performance
• Teacher applicants (12 chosen)• Exploration of student thinking• Generation of testable approaches to
shifting to sense-making practices
TAKE 1: TOOLS FOR SENSE-MAKING
STEM:
Offers students a brief description of some quantitative information.
For example: A dragonfly can fly fast. It can go about 50 feet in two seconds.
QUESTION:
Asks student to use the information in the stem and apply it to a situation that is different or more detailed.
For example: How long would it take for the dragonfly to go 275 feet?
or
How far could could the dragonfly fly in 11 seconds?
SOLUTION:
Provides “answer” to the question using the stem’s information, but also provides insight to how these types of situations can be handled in mathematics.
For example:
50 feet/2 seconds indicates a unit rate of 25 feet per second.
275 ÷ 25 = 11
Therefore the dragonfly can fly 275 feet in 11 seconds.
• http://math.serpmedia.org/sense-making/
The Scaling Challenge
• The district mechanism for taking pedagogy to scale (MSTLI) was defunded
• Sharing practices across teachers was counter-cultural
• Observations of classrooms suggested bigger challenges:– Teacher discomfort with uncertainty– Sense-making with below grade level math– Limited capacity to use divergent thinking
Iterative design
• TAKE II: Team of researchers and teachers try their hand at more fully designed lessons.
Iterative Design
• TAKE III: Formal user-centered design process to create “poster problems”
• http://math.serpmedia.org/diagnostic_teaching/
Ready for Scale?
• District’s challenge is redefined– New people– New context (CCSS-M)– New challenge (how do we get everyone
to engage in rich math tasks?)
Been there….
• RISE Assessment
• Word Generation
• (STARI?)
• Internal Coherence Survey and Protocol