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| History and sponsorship | |
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effort to design survey items measuring knowledge for teaching mathematics
grew out of the unique needs of the Study of Instructional Improvement (SII). SII investigated the
design and enactment of three leading comprehensive school reforms and these reforms' effects on students' academic and social performance.
As part of this research, lead investigators realized a need not only for measures that represent school and classroom processes
(e.g., school norms, resources, instructional methods used to teach mathematics) but also teachers' facility in using subject matter
knowledge in the context of classroom teaching. Having such measures allowed SII to investigate the effects of teachers' knowledge
on student achievement, and to understand how implementation of these reform programs is mediated by teachers'content knowledge.
While many potential methods for exploring and measuring teachers' content knowledge exist (i.e., interviews, observations, structured tasks),
we elected to focus our efforts on developing survey measures because of the large number of teachers (over 5000) participating in SII. Beginning in 2000, we undertook the development of such survey measures. Using theory, research, the study of curriculum materials and student work, and our own experience, we wrote items we believe represent the knowledge teachers use in teaching elementary mathematics - representing numbers, interpreting unusual student answers or algorithms, anticipating student difficulties with material. With the assistance of the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), we piloted these items as part of an evaluation of the state's Mathematics Professional Development Institutes. This California collaboration developed into a sister project to SII, Learning Mathematics for Teaching. In addition to UCOP, initial survey development and piloting was supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, and Atlantic Philanthropies. In 2002, we received support from the National Science Foundation's Math-Science Partnership (MSP) program to continue measures development in new content areas and at the middle school grades. These funds also allowed us to collect videos of classroom instruction, which we analyzed to understand the mathematical tasks teachers encounter, and then wrote new items reflecting those tasks. Additional grants from the NSF over the next five years allowed us to validate these measures and to develop an online assessment system. Beginning in 2014, our grant support ended and we transitioned to being a self-funded enterprise housed at the University of Michigan’s School of Education and Institute for Social Research. |
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