Boston College will conduct a three-year project to enhance mathematics teachers of grades 7 through 12 in basic knowledge of discrete mathematics topics, in implementing discrete mathematics in their classroom and in sharing instructional experiences with their students and teacher colleagues. Discrete mathematics content areas to be addressed are social choice, graph theory, recursion, counting and matrices. Two possible ways to fuse discrete mathematics into the secondary curriculum will be considered: a separate course in discrete mathematics for upper secondary students, and an infusion of discrete mathematics topics into all existing secondary mathematics classes, beginning at the middle school level. Emphasis will be placed on mathematical problem solving, reasoning, communication and connections. Project activities include an initial three-week summer leadership workshop for 22 teachers with experience in teaching discrete mathematics. These leader-teachers will be trained to become members of leadership teams who, together with Presidential Award Winners who are members of the project's senior staff, will conduct three-week summer workshops in six regions of the country in years two and three of the project. Three hundred sixty second-wave teachers will participate in these workshops which will include a follow-up session to bond teachers at the local level into a support network for implementing discrete mathematics. In turn, these teachers are expected to conduct inservice activities within their school district, reaching approximately 4000 of their colleagues in third-wave enhancement, for a total of 4382 teachers so enhanced. This proposal addresses the enhancement of teachers in an important area of mathematics, new to the secondary curriculum. And the teachers-teaching-teachers pyramid model lends itself to wide dissemination. Boston University, University of North Carolina, Illinois State University, S.W. Texas University, Portland State University, and California State Polytechnic cost-sharing accounts for 3% of the NSF budget.
