REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.

Thanks very much for your interest. If you'd like to be involved in future research / professional development opportunities, please contact Heidi Larson at: hlarson@edc.org with your name, e-mail, and role or title.

Call for Participants: Middle School Mathematics Teachers
Professional Development Opportunity
Building Algebraic Thinking in the Middle Grades through Pattern & FunctionResearch on Approaches to Online Professional Development

We are looking for 275 middle school (grades 7-8) mathematics teachers for Year 2 of a research project exploring the impact of varying approaches to online professional development. Participants in the study will receive either a $200 stipend or reduced tuition toward graduate credit, in addition to a valuable online professional development experience. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project is led by Dr. Glenn Kleiman of the EDC Center for Online Professional Education (http://www.edc.org/COPE) and by Dr. Mike Russell of the Boston College Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative (http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/).

Participating teachers will be enrolled in an 8-week, online course called Building Algebraic Thinking in the Middle Grades through Pattern and Function. The course specifically addresses patterns and functions, but it also emphasizes the nature of students' common misconceptions and the role of classroom discussions in eliciting deeper student thinking. The course was piloted last year to excellent reviews, and 100% of the participants said they would recommend the course to others.

"Building Algebraic Thinking in the Middle Grades is a great course to help analyze your teaching practices and elicit algebraic thinking in your students. It encourages you to analyze your students' thinking, provides materials to enhance your classroom, and fine tunes your questioning techniques."

"My students really enjoy math class! They no longer observe my teaching of a lesson, but rather, they are the lesson! They must think, so they learn!"

"I knew that I could teach "the book" but now I am teaching "thinking" and algebra is just the subject, but it translates to all of maths and sciences and maybe even other subjects....."

Teachers participating in this project will be randomly assigned to one of the three online approaches: (1) an individual, self-paced course; (2) a self-paced course with an accompanying discussion board for participant interaction; and (3) a structured, learning community-based course with online discussions among their classmates. Participants must agree to participate in whichever one of the three approaches they are assigned within the research study.

We are sorry, but for purposes of the research we cannot enroll teachers from Maine, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts.

What it Means to Participate:

The course will run over a period of 8 weeks, with an expectation that participants will spend 40 hours total (5 hours per week) on online and off-line activities. In addition to completing the coursework, participating teachers must be willing to:

Complete 3 surveys at the beginning and end of the course. We estimate the surveys will take 90 minutes to complete;
Complete a Teacher Log for three (3) consecutive days, twice during the eight (8) week period;
Administer a short Student Survey twice during the eight (8) week period;
Be available for occasional informal communication during the course and for the remainder of the school year; and
Be willing for project staff to observe classes and review lesson plans.

In exchange for participating, teachers will have the option to select either a $200 stipend or graduate course credit (5 quarter or 3 semester credits) from Antioch University Seattle for a reduced tuition fee of $100. Graduate credit will require satisfactory completion of all coursework.

Baseline data on teachers and schools will be collected in January of 2005. The course Building Algebraic Thinking in the Middle Grades through Pattern and Function will begin in January (expected start date January 10, 2005) and will run for eight (8) weeks. Follow-up data will be collected in April, 2005 and participants may be contacted for informal feedback from April, 2005 through October, 2005.