The project Engaging Mathematics: Building a National Community of Practice, is a faculty development and dissemination initiative, which is expanding the work of the NSF funded project Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) by increasing the use of the SENCER model to create, implement, and sustain reforms in mathematics education. SENCER focuses on learning mathematics and science content through "real world" problems and engaging students in course work that is framed within complex civic issues. Engaging Mathematics is creating a wider community of mathematics scholars within SENCER, capable of implementing and sustaining curricular reforms and broadening SENCER impacts. The project offers a persistent and recurring program of national dissemination which includes developing assessment tools to monitor students' perceptions of the usefulness of mathematics, their interest and confidence in doing mathematics, the students' growth in knowledge content, and their ability to apply mathematics to better understand complex civic issues.
Engaging Mathematics is a cooperative program between three lead institutions, Metropolitan State University, LaGuardia Community College, and the United States Military Academy and four partner institutions to develop and assess curricula that teach students mathematics through civic issues. Mathematics faculty not already affiliated with SENCER will be invited and encouraged to use the materials developed through the project and adapt them to their unique institutional needs.
The project provides an opportunity to develop faculty capacity to connect learning in mathematics courses to real and relevant local, regional, national and global issues and thus greatly improve students' retention of specific mathematics concepts and skills, along with their understanding of the role of mathematical modeling and quantitative literacy in everyday life. Engaging Mathematics is producing adaptable mathematics curricula that use the framework of civic issues to study mathematics and its real-world applications and utilize active, inquiry-based pedagogies. The Engaging Mathematics community of practice is generating durable collaborations among faculty members and institutions, fostering cross-fertilization and adoption of innovative courses and practices, enabling effective assessment and disseminating materials to the larger mathematics education community. The impact of the project is helping students appreciate the value and power of mathematics, regardless of their fields of study, and to enable undergraduates to use skills and dispositions developed in these courses to have greater and more effective engagement with the complex civic issues that face them as members of society.
