Investigating the Interrelated Development of Mathematics and Literacy in Urban Secondary Schools

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

The central idea in this proposed work is to conceptualize the nature and development of teachers' knowledge as they, in turn, learn about how students in culturally diverse urban secondary schools negotiate the literacy demands of reform-based mathematics curricula. We make three central claims as a rationale for this proposed work. First, the mathematical tasks that students and teachers encounter in the reform-based secondary school curricula represent a significant shift from traditional curricula in terms of the literacy demands they make on students and teachers. Second, students in urban settings, where literacy and mathematics achievement often lags behind achievement of students in other settings, are at great risk for not being able to meet the increased literacy demands of the reform-based curricula and of the communications standard put forward by the NCTM. Third, secondary mathematics teachers are underprepared to mediate the intersections between mathematics and literacy. Our driving perspective in this work will be to understand the nature of what teachers need to know to support students' development of mathematical communication in ways that lead to effective learning of algebra and to understand how it is that this knowledge is developed among a community of urban mathematics teachers. In this project, we will investigate these research questions: How do teachers understand student use of the language of algebra for mathematical communication when using reform-based mathematics curricula in diverse, urban settings? How do teachers' understandings about the language of algebra for mathematical communication develop in ways that lead to the effective teaching of algebra? We will use qualitative research methods to explore the sociocultural aspects of mathematics communication. These analyses will describe the nature and development of the teachers' learning, in the context of the students' learning of algebra, using reform- based curricula. We will use quantitative measures of mathematics and literacy performance to discern relative effectiveness of teachers' instructional strategies that attend to the literacy demands of the curricula. This study will address important theoretical issues in understanding the underlying structures of language in the acquisition of algebraic thinking and learning. The analyses of the data on the learning and growth of teachers through an examination of the artifacts of practice will contribute to theoretical issues as well as pragmatic issues in the use of reformed-based curricula by secondary mathematics teachers. The broader impact of this project will be: (1) a model and underlying principles for how teachers acquire knowledge in areas in which they are underprepared; (2) processes for teachers to analyze mathematical tasks and their contexts in terms of their literacy demands; (3) principles for transforming their analyses into practice; (4) principles for ways of using multimedia cases of practice to support teacher