Numerical Understanding Mentored By Expert Researchers (NUMBERs) workshop

Kent State University, Kent OH

Investigators

Abstract

Gaps in math achievement in the United States are numerous: children in the US lag behind children in other higher performing countries; children in low income families lag behind those with higher incomes; and girls lag behind boys even for the highest achieving students. These national, socio-economic, and gender gaps can result in negative downstream outcomes for the lower achieving students, such as limiting the types of careers that they can pursue. Closing these gaps is essential, especially given that the US seeks to increase its workforce in areas that require strong mathematical understanding, such as in science, technology, and engineering. Thus, discovering solutions on how to close these gaps will have a broad and positive impact on the public welfare. Towards discovering these solutions, the organizing committees’ goals are (a) to identify the most promising avenues for developing and evaluating the efficacy of interventions aimed at improving math achievement and closing the math-achievement gaps and (b) to foster the development of younger scientists in the field of math cognition/education – the next generation of math researchers who will be charged to solve these and other societal problems that arise from underachievement in math. The Numerical Understanding Mentored by Expert Researchers (NUMBERS) Workshop will be designed to foster high-quality research aimed at closing the gaps in math education. To do so, the organizing committee of this two-day workshop will provide a venue where expert, senior scientists can share their vision for the most promising avenues for future research and provide direct mentorship and guidance for younger scientists (postdoctoral and graduate students) who aspire to conduct math research that will have an impact. The schedule and agenda for the NUMBERs workshop will achieve several aims: (a) develop a forum to allow workshop attendees to engage K-12 educators to identify their most pressing needs for enhancing math education; (b) provide an overview of prior interventions aimed at improving math education and the most important questions to guide future research; (c) provide up-to-date discussion and analyses of cutting-edge theory of math ability to foster theory-driven research (theoretical and applied) in the next decade; (d) provide expert mentorship to young scholars who are developing their research programs around math scholarship; (e) provide a mind's-on workshop that will guide both senior and junior scientists on how to effectively translate their research ideas into fundable NSF grants; and (f) foster collaborations among workshop attendees. Although participation will be limited to about 50 scientists so as to ensure that everyone can actively engage in all aspects of the workshop (and so that younger scientists can receive individual mentorship from senior scientists), the impact of the workshop will be broader and inclusive. In particular, the organizing committee will summarize the development and success of the workshop (which will be made available on the NUMBERS Workshop website), and, most important, all sessions held during the NUMBERS Workshop will be video-recorded so as to share the talks with the broader research and education community. This project is co-funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12), which seeks to enhance preK-12 teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics through the research and development of new innovations and approaches. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.