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Thinking About Mathematics Instruction
Leadership Content Knowledge
Elementary and Middle School Principals’ Survey

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Overview and Comparison of the Pre- and Post-surveys
3. Pre-Survey
4. Post-Survey
5. Assembling Your Own Mathematics Content Knowledge Section
6. Coding Schemes and Sample Responses
7. Validity and Reliability Considerations

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Introduction

Welcome to the Thinking About Mathematics Instruction (TMI) Leadership Content Knowledge Elementary and Middle School Principals’ Survey website. This survey is the cornerstone of a research project (NSF Grant EHR-0335384) to investigate elementary and middle school principals’ leadership content knowledge (LCK) for mathematics. LCK relates to principals’ knowledge of mathematics for teaching and their ideas about the nature of mathematics learning and mathematics instruction. This site describes how we used the survey and how we scored and coded the results in our work. It includes the contents of the survey itself as well as coding schemes for analyzing the qualitative aspects of the data on LCK that the survey provides. (If you are interested in principals and other administrators at the secondary level, please click here to find information about a comparable survey developed to measure the LCK of secondary administrators.)

The original purposes of the TMI survey were to help formulate a picture of the LCK of the national sample of elementary and middle school principals who participated in our study and to ascertain what can be learned about the LCK of a sub-group of these principals from efforts to improve it through a professional development program in mathematics education for elementary and middle school administrators called Lenses on Learning. Developed at EDC with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant ESI-9731242), Lenses provides principals and other administrators with opportunities both to think through different orientations toward mathematics learning and teaching and to explore mathematical topics from the elementary and middle school curriculum more deeply than they may have been able to do previously.

Now that we have finished administering the TMI surveys, we are releasing all items, with the exception of those items that are part of the Mathematics Content Knowledge for Teaching Section, for use by those who wish to gain an understanding of the LCK of principals with whom they work. We are not at liberty to release the Mathematics Content Knowledge for Teaching section because it comprises items that are still in use in various other research contexts. We do, however, provide detailed information about the contents of this section as well as how to assemble your own mathematics content knowledge section.

The following is a Table of Contents for this website:

1.	Introduction (current page)
2.	Overview and Comparison of the Pre- and Post-surveys
3.	The Pre-survey, section by section
	Part 1	Background Information (pdf)
	Part 2	Teaching and Learning of Mathematics (pdf)
		Section A	A Classroom Reflection (pdf)
		Section B	Identifying Teaching Styles  Because this item did not yield clear results, we are omitting it from this website.
		Section C	Views about Math (pdf)
	Part C	Doing Mathematics (This section should be labeled PART 3. Please overlook this irregularity in our numbering system; we retain it in order to be able to add our colleagues’ data without confusion to our existing data base which is based on the original numbering system.) Doing Mathematics has been omitted from the survey on the website, but it is discussed in the survey description.
4.	The Post-survey, section by section
	Part 1	About You and Your School (pdf)
	Part 2	Teaching and Learning of Mathematics (pdf)
		Section A	A Classroom Reflection (pdf)
		Section B	Identifying Teaching Styles:  Because this item did not yield clear results, we are omitting it from this website.
		Section C	Views about Math (pdf)
	Part 3	Doing Mathematics
	Part 4	Demographics and Professional Experience
5.	Assembling Your Own Mathematics Content Knowledge Section
6.	Coding Schemes and Sample Responses
	a.	Coding scheme for A Classroom Reflection: BELIEFS Scoring Scheme
	b.	Coding scheme for A Classroom Reflection: MATH-IN-USE Scoring Scheme
	a.	Coding scheme for Static Scorers
7.	Validity and Reliability Considerations