IMPLEMENTATION
OF A REFORM MATHEMATICS CURRICULUM: A CASE STUDY
Daniel J. Brahier
Bowling Green State
University
An urban school district in the Midwest selected
a reform mathematics curriculum for city-wide adoption, following a year of
piloting across grades Kindergarten through Five. A grant from a State-funded agency was used to conduct staff
development sessions, work with local administrators and community members, and
monitor progress of the implementation.
The purpose of this study was to determine the effects on attitudes and
practices of teachers and achievement levels of students as a result of the new
program. Questionnaires, written cases
of student work, interviews, test results, and site visits were used to
generate data.
The program has directly or
indirectly affected the teaching and curriculum of 104 teachers. Of these teachers, 21 were involved in the
piloting process, and 48 of them attended staff development sessions in the
grant-funded program. Evolutionary
modifications to the staff development process occurred as administrators and
teachers met jointly at in-service sessions to discuss implementation of the
reform mathematics program. Together,
they decided to establish several internal staff development teams that could
support other teachers. Each team
consisted of three teachers; a total of ten teachers were designated to serve
in this capacity. The most consistent
district-wide problem was that of assessing student performance.
The case studies written by project
teachers show students thinking about mathematics in nontraditional ways. Teachers were consistently surprised at the
level at which their students functioned when pressed to communicate and reason
in a mathematics class, and the staff development has influenced their thinking
on the process of teaching and learning mathematics itself. State Proficiency Test scores at the
building with complete implementation have increased over the past two years,
and an experimental open-ended question administered in two buildings showed
the reform classroom to perform significantly higher on the item. Involvement of middle grades teachers and
the success of this project has led the district to consider adoption of a
reform middle school mathematics curriculum as well.