Program Goals and Principles

The goal of The Math Forum @ Drexel in working with your schools is to improve the quality of math education by building interactive services. Over time, we build on these student programs to provide professional development, on a flexible schedule, to enhance content knowledge, teaching practices, and understanding of student learning.

Over the course of program activity, a wealth of knowledge and shared resources are developed and published online for the benefit of future collaborators. This maximizes your investment and contributes resources from the broader community to create services of real value to students, teachers, and parents. The Math Forum's approach reflects the following principles:

• Develop partnerships across the community. We will work with you to develop programs tailored to your needs and resources. The learning communities that we establish build local capacity and honor local initiatives. Math Forum programs encourage collaboration among area higher education institutions, corporations, professional associations, researchers, and schools, enabling each to work efficiently toward its goal of providing students with strong mathematics preparation.
  
  
• Combine face-to-face and online programs. Onsite professional development in-service workshops enable us to model, instruct, and collaborate directly with faculty. This continuity of interactions provides ideas and materials as needed, and builds up resources based on the activity of the involved faculty, staff, and students.
  
  
• Coordinate student programs and teacher professional development. Student enrichment programs inform teacher professional development activities, grounding them in the real work of the classroom. Teacher professional development activities guide student services, supporting the in-class curriculum sequence and maximizing the investment in and impact on learning.
  
  
• Leverage local resources. Math Forum programs build on the work of local curriculum specialists and lead teachers through online programs and resource areas that capture their activity and make it available to others.
  
  
• Integrate work into broader community. We network local teachers and programs with related work across the country and in other countries, expanding the resources and opening opportunities for support communities where the local environment lacks the critical mass, or expertise, or desired perspective.

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