Annual Report Overviews

Teachers’ endorsement of standards-based instructional strategies could be interpreted in different ways. One hypothesis is that many teachers who have not yet participated in training highly value investigative instructional strategies and would like to use them in their classrooms. Perhaps, these teachers will welcome the new curriculum and instruction. On the other hand, the findings that many teachers are not well prepared to carry out these activities imply that many will require some professional development to be able to implement them in their classrooms. Teachers’ endorsement of these instructional strategies in combination with their lack of preparation may suggest that many are eager to learn these types of instructional strategies.

Supporting evidence for the eagerness to learn how to implement standards-based instructional strategies comes from informal conversations with teachers and school administrators. When observing teachers’ classrooms, the evaluator learned that kindergarten through fourth grade teachers who were scheduled to participate in ACME professional development in subsequent years of the project were anxiously awaiting the opportunity. One fourth grade teacher said that she had seen what a trained fifth grade teacher had been doing in her mathematics classroom and looked forward to learning more about the new curriculum and instruction herself. A first grade teacher was disappointed to find out that she would have to wait two years before participating in ACME professional development.

Similarly, some schools are not waiting for the planned grade-by-grade implementation to reach all of their teachers. Although the district is committed to buying curriculum materials for all campuses before each grade level begins professional development, ACME program staff reported that some schools have bought the materials with campus funds for all grade levels in advance. Because on some campuses all of the teachers wanted to participate, not just the fifth and sixth grade teachers who were scheduled, schools requested professional development for teachers in other grade levels. ACME program staff decided that they could not include extra participants, and some school staffs were disappointed. On at least one campus, the administrator hired outside staff developers to teach their teachers, who were not yet targeted for ACME professional development, how to implement investigative mathematics curriculum and instruction.

Thus, it appears that some teachers’ eagerness to learn how to implement the standards-based curriculum and instruction may explain, in part, the high level of endorsement of these strategies coupled with their reported lack of preparation to use these strategies. Moreover, the eagerness of some teachers who must wait for professional development suggests that a momentum may build as some motivated teachers anxiously anticipate their turn to participate and to try out standards-based curriculum and instruction.

Another hypothesis is that teachers’ endorsement of the standards-based curriculum may reflect familiarity with the language of new trends in mathematics education, but teachers may lack a clear understanding of the implications of these strategies for classroom activities and children’s learning. These data were gathered through teachers’ responses to questionnaire items. Many teachers may be familiar with phrases like "hands-on activities" or "cooperative learning" and readily rate these items as very important. Cohen (1990) found that although teachers may be able to communicate in the language of mathematics reforms, their classroom instruction may be dominated by traditional strategies. Thus, the findings that teachers highly endorse standards-based strategies may be misleading because the data are self-report. Teachers’ endorsement does not necessarily imply that these strategies will be evident in their teaching practice.

Other evidence from teachers’ questionnaires points to their lack of information about mathematics reforms. Before participating in the ACME project, some teachers in the district were not familiar with NCTM standards. Twenty-two percent of the mathematics teachers and 29% of the special education teachers did not consider themselves well-informed about the NCTM Standards for the grades they teach, and 21% and 32%, respectively, had no opinion. Consequently, 43% of the mathematics teachers and 61% of the special education teachers who responded did not assert that they knew the standards well. Although some teachers who have not participated in the project endorse the language of standards-based instructional strategies, they may not know the philosophy behind the strategies nor how to use the techniques effectively to help children reason mathematically. This finding supports the hypothesis that teachers may be familiar with the language of standards-based strategies, but not understand the implications of these strategies for teaching and learning.

Project staff discerned this lack of knowledge about standards-based mathematics education during the first year of the project. One staff member said,

We had to examine where our teachers are. Our teachers didn’t know NCTM standards or understand problem-solving. When we launched the professional development, we assumed that teachers knew why "drill and kill" was not O.K. We had to go back and talk about it, go back to the foundations.