Secondary Lenses on Learning:

Leadership for Mathematics Education
in Middle and High Schools - Research

Research has shown that administrators’ understanding of high quality mathematics instruction and their ideas about how they can support it are significantly influenced by their ideas about the nature of mathematics, teaching, and learning (Nelson, 1998; Spillane & Halverson, 1998; Spillane & Thompson, 1997). It has been proposed that administrators’ leadership content knowledge (LCK) – their knowledge of the subject matter of instruction, and beliefs about how it is learned and how it is effectivelytaught – is critical to their effectiveness as school and district leaders for the improvement of student achievement (Stein & D’Amico, 2000; Stein & Nelson, 2003).

Intertwined with the development of the Lenses on Learning curricula over the past 8 years has been a series of research projects studying administrators’ Leadership Content Knowledge (LCK) for mathematics, at both the elementary and secondary levels. Current research questions include:

• What is the nature of Leadership Content Knowledge (LCK) of administrators responsible for elementary, middle, and high school mathematics?
• What is the LCK for mathematics available, individually and collectively, to teams of leaders who report having responsibility for particular leadership functions related to the mathematics program at the secondary level?
• How does taking a Lenses on Learning course affect elementary and secondary administrators’ LCK?

Some of the studies we have conducted have been cross-case, qualitative analyses of  particular aspects of principals’ LCK for mathematics and case studies of the LCK of selected individual principals (Nelson & Sassi, 2005). We also have conducted a large-scale, mixed-methods, longitudinal study of elementary principals’ LCK.   With respect to secondary administrators we have been investigating these questions in the context of developing, piloting, field-testing, and publishing the Lenses on Learning Secondary materials in mathematics education for teams of educators from middle and high schools: principals, assistant principals, math teachers, guidance counselors, special needs teachers, along with selected central office staff. The first paper describing these findings is Leadership Content Knowledge for Mathematics of Staff Engaged in Key School Leadership Functions (Nelson, Stimpson & Jordan, 2007). Below we describe the research methodology for this study.

Sample
Five field test sites were located in various regions of the country; four of the five were located in large metropolitan areas, with a combination of urban and suburban schools participating in the field test; one field test site was in a rural area.  At each site the course facilitator recruited teams from local middle and high schools to participate in the course.  Teams ranged in size from 3 to 10 members, each made up of educators holding several different positions. Field test Lenses sites were typically composed of between 4 and 6 such teams.

In total, 107 school leaders participated in our first study, a total of 12 principals, 13 assistant principals, 8 math department heads or math team leaders, 46 math teachers, 7 special needs teachers, 13 math instructional coaches, 2 guidance counselors, and 6 others.

Instruments
Participants completed a survey assessing LCK for mathematics twice -- once before and once after the Lenses on Learning Secondary course was offered. The survey used in this research was adapted from the LCK for mathematics survey that we previously developed for use in a national study of 500 elementary school principals. (Nelson, et al. 2005).  We modified the survey for secondary administrators by replacing the open-ended response questions depicting a mathematics classroom and the mathematics content knowledge sections with items more appropriate for middle and high school teachers and administrators. The modified survey was pilot tested with the approximately 140 participants who were part of the pilot testing of the Lenses on Learning Secondary course.  Modifications were made in those instances where items in the survey, or the instructions, seemed difficult for respondents to understand.

Surveys were administered to field test participants by on-site staff. The survey took approximately two hours to complete. Participants completed the baseline data collection in the fall of 2006 and follow-up data were gathered in spring 2007.  The data reported in the paper cited above are from the baseline administration of the survey.

The survey had four sections in which we gathered information about respondents’ (1) professional history, (2) degree of responsibility for a variety of school or district leadership functions, (3) mathematics epistemology (beliefs about mathematics learning and teaching), and (4) mathematics knowledge for teaching. Click here for more survey information and samples.

We are currently doing data analysis and writing papers about the LCK for mathematics of secondary administrators. Click here for more information these, and other, publications from EDC's Center for Development of Teaching.