Developers and researchers at North Carolina State University and Horizon Research, Inc. are adapting and studying successful discourse strategies used during language arts instruction to help teachers promote mathematically-rich classroom discourse. Of special interest to the project is the use of models to promote mathematics communication that includes English language learners (ELL) in mathematics discourse.
The project is conceived as a design experiment that includes successive instructional engineering cycles in which the R&D team designs professional learning tasks, implements the tasks with teachers, and revises the tasks and their sequencing to better support the desired learning outcomes. The members of the project team then examine the effects of the PD on teachers' instruction and the possibilities for scaling up the materials across PD facilitators, grade levels, and curriculum materials. The overarching research questions guiding the research and development effort proposed in this project are: How do generalist elementary teachers learn to promote high quality mathematics discourse that includes all students in their classrooms and engages those students in meaningful mathematics learning opportunities? How do we scale up an intervention designed to support elementary teacher learning of ways to promote high quality mathematics discourse in their classrooms?
The project will result in a full 40-hour professional development module to support mathematics discourse for Grade 2 teachers, with an emphasis on place value, multidigit addition and subtraction, and linear measurement. The main professional learning tasks of the program will have been piloted and studied in a series of sessions with mathematics coaches and teachers.
