NCTM San Diego
Presentation Summary
This is the summary of a presentation given at the 74th Annual NCTM Meeting, 25-28 April 1996, San Diego, CA.
Participants in this session will analyze a set of data-rich vignettes culled from case studies conducted by the Curriculum Reform Project (CRP). The OERI-funded CRP studied three high schools that have taken different approaches to changing their mathematics classes. Session attendees will participate in two group activities. In the first, they will read and analyze data from a single case. They will use the CRP framework to identify issues and construct questions. In the second activity, attendees will be re-grouped to engage in cross-site analyses of the three cases . The goal of this second group session -- and a follow-up full group discussion -- is to highlight similarities and differences across these cases.
Project Abstract The Curriculum Reform Project (CRP) was a four-year case-study research project housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder (OERI Grant #R91182001). The project examined three high schools working to change their students' mathematical experiences. One of these case studies was conducted during the 1992-93 school year; the remaining ones were completed during the 1993-94 school year.
The CRP had three goals. First, we described and interpreted the processes of reform we observed at each site from a variety of perspectives, including those of the important players at the site and our own outsiders' perspective. The focus of each of the case studies was classrooms and interactions among teachers and students, but in each case we worked to identify those personal and contextual factors that influenced these classrooms and interactions. Second, we sought to situate the small segment of time we have observed directly at each site in a longer time continuum that includes both historical antecedents and some possible future trajectories of the reform. Finally, through analyses across sites, we identified similarities and differences in the complex processes we found at each.
The three sites were chosen according to several criteria. First, the sites had to be able to provide evidence that reform efforts already under way were having the desired effects on student learning. (This was a requirement of our funding agency.) Each of our sites met this criterion. Second, the sites had to be taking different approaches to reform. One of the sites has been changing from within by trying a wide variety of new materials and approaches for over a decade The other sites have each adopted specific new programs, and each within the last few years. One of these two schools is tied directly into a statewide reform effort, while at the other the mathematics department is proceeding without state or district mandates. Third, the schools had to provide different contexts for reform. One school is a new school in a wealthy suburban district known for its excellence. Another is experiencing a dramatic shift in the demographic mix of its students. The third has a relatively large transient student population. Finally, each of the sites had to be a secondary school. We have found that this level has received relatively little attention in the literature. Each is a high school located in the western third of the United States. The primary researcher for each case spent at least 18 days on site, primarily in two- to five-day time periods, collecting the following data: classroom observations; formal interviews with teachers, students, and administrators; curriculum and policy documents; samples of student work; participant and non-participant observations and informal discussions outside classrooms. (Each of the presenters listed above was the primary researcher at one site; the principal presenter also spent two days at each of the other sites.)
Classroom data provided the initial focus for data analysis in each case. Through domain analysis within sites and discussions across sites, the researchers agreed on a coding scheme with the following descriptive categories: goals, content, teacher role, teacher learning, student role, student learning, assessment. In order to complete a rich "snapshot" of each site, the contextual data were searched to reconstruct the history of the observed reforms, and to identify important factors that helped shape them. In particular, the researchers sought the following information: various perspectives on the vision of the reform; the influence of school and district administration and school, district or state policies; supports or constraints provided by the community; the ways in which networks of teachers -- either within or outside the school -- influenced the work of those teachers.
Not surprisingly, the conflicts and dilemmas that the researchers found at each site have had profound influences on the results of reform efforts. Each of our sites has classrooms in which exciting mathematics is being taught in ways that make it more accessible to many more students. Each has new courses and materials and new technology in place. Each has teachers who have been transformed by their hard work. In addition, however, each of our schools has struggled with the core issues that have been raised by these reform efforts: What is mathematics? Can all students learn mathematics? What mathematics should all students learn, and in what sequence? What is the teacher's role in a mathematics classroom? How can teachers tell if students are learning what they need to know? How can teachers learn what they need to know? How do schools, and teachers in those schools, manage demands and expectations (e.g., standardized tests, college admissions, needs of non-college bound students) that might seem at odds with reform efforts? The results of these struggles are mathematics programs at each of our sites that are in complex ways neither what was there before nor what was intended by the reform efforts. This project has constructed a framework for understanding the common issues raised by these mathematics reform efforts, issues that have played out in unique ways at each of our schools.
Lewis S. Romagnano (Metropolitan State College, Denver, CO)
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