Elementary Mathematics Project (EMP)
Design and Preliminary Outcomes
Suzanne H. Chapin
EMP Lesson Design Principles
Principle 1: A focus on problems and discussion
questions that address content knowledge for
teaching mathematics at the elementary level
Connecting Mathematical Concepts & Ideas
Overview
Preliminary Results
The Elementary Pre-service Teachers Mathematics Project (EMP) is an NSF-funded project at Boston University whose overarching goal is to
develop and disseminate learning materials that strengthen pre-service elementary teachers’ understanding of mathematics for teaching.
Three instructional units were developed that focus on mathematical knowledge for teaching and use discourse-based instructional
strategies designed to help participants understand, explain, and justify mathematical ideas and procedures. The goals of the project are to:
• develop pre-service teachers’ specialized content knowledge of number theory, fractions, and geometric measurement;
• develop pre-service teachers’ abilities to communicate, reason, justify, and generalize about elementary mathematics;
• provide a problem-driven, discourse-based model of instruction that can inform pre-service teachers’ work with their future students;
and
• support faculty members’ use of this ambitious teaching as they implement instructional units.
Paired-sample t-test Results for all Subjects and Subgroups on Number
Theory Scores
EMP Materials
Understanding Why a Formula/Rule/Algorithm Works
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Making Sense of Mathematical Structure
Identifying the Mathematics in Elementary Students’
Thinking
Student lessons/handouts
Educative Instructor’s Guides
Homework documents
Answer keys
Presentation aids
Video clips of enactments
Background information
• Key mathematical ideas
• Setting classroom norms
• Supporting group work
• Facilitating discussions
Paired-sample t-test Results for all Subjects and Subgroups on
Geometric Measurement Scores
“The instructors guides provided so
many prompts for great
conversations… they prompted me to
consider student thinking in a new
way. Also they sort of prepped me to
more quickly recognize certain
patterns of thinking during individual
and group work….I really enjoyed
having my thinking pushed through
the guides and the homework sets.”
Engaging in Mathematical Practices
Principle 2: Engagement in recurring cycles of
collaborative problem solving and group discussion
Paired-sample t-test Results by Content Unit
Research Question 1
Research Question 2
Did using the EMP materials to teach content
knowledge for teaching mathematics (CKTM) affect
pre-service teachers’ overall scores on CKTM-focused
assessments for the units: Number Theory, Geometric
Measurement, and Fractions?
Did the effect of the EMP materials on pre-service teachers’ achievement
by content area differ by:
• Whether the course the materials were used in was classified as a
mathematics content course, a mathematics methods course or a
course that combined the teaching of content and methods?
• Whether the instructor’s primary teaching responsibility was in an
education department or a mathematics department?
• Whether the instructor was a full-time faculty member, part-time
faculty member or a graduate student?
Methods
• Data collected from Sept. 2013 - May 2015
• Pre- and Post-tests by unit administered
• Reliability and validity established
(Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients
of 0.8, 0.85 and 0.87)
• Scored using rubrics
• Tests primarily asked questions that
required explanation, justification and
generalization (60-75% of points)
• Conducted paired sample t-tests by unit
PI: Suzanne Chapin [email protected], Co-PIs: Ziv Feldman [email protected],
Alejandra Salinas [email protected]
NSF Grant Numbers: CCLI 0837349,
-2011; TUES 1323156 2013-2015
SAMPLE
• 33 institutions
• 46 instructors
• 1494 undergraduates
About 40% of instructors
field-tested more than
1 unit
Paired-sample t-test Results for all Subjects and Subgroups on Fraction
Scores
Instructors
• Education affiliation:
52%
• Mathematics affiliation: 46%
• Joint:
2%
• Full-time:
• Part-time/Grad:
74%
26%
• Majority of field testers taught
content courses but this differed
by unit (50-80%)
Results
• Results show that PSTs had statistically significantly gains from pre- to
post-test. Effect sizes were very high: 1.71, 1.23 and 1.51.
• Results support the effectiveness of the EMP units in increasing PSTs
CKTM regardless of type of course or department affiliation of the
instructors or whether or not the units were used at BU.
• The content and methods designed into the instructional materials
appear to play a significant role in PSTs’ achievement gains.