Mathematics Teachers at Work

Connecting Curriculum Materials and Classroom Instruction

Janine T. Remillard, Beth A. Herbel-Eisenmann, Gwendolyn M. Lloyd, Janine T. Remillard, Beth A. Herbel-Eisenmann, Gwendolyn M. Lloyd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781135855628
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This book compiles and synthesizes existing research on teachers' use of mathematics curriculum materials and the impact of curriculum materials on teaching and teachers, with a particular emphasis on – but not restricted to – those materials developed in the 1990s in response to the NCTM's Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. Despite the substantial amount of curriculum development activity over the last 15 years and growing scholarly interest in their use, the book represents the first compilation of research on teachers and mathematics curriculum materials and the first volume with this focus in any content area in several decades.

I
Introduction

1
Teachers’ Use of Curriculum Materials

An Emerging Field

Gwendolyn M. Lloyd, Janine T. Remillard, and Beth A. Herbel-Eisenmann

The chapters in this book represent a growing body of scholarship in mathematics education and research on teaching that places teachers at the center of questions about the effects of curriculum materials on classroom instruction and student learning. Authors seek to understand what happens (for the teacher and the students) when teachers use curriculum programs, and why. An underlying assumption of this work is that teachers are central players in the process of transforming curriculum ideals, captured in the form of mathematical tasks, lesson plans and pedagogical recommendations, into real classroom events. What they do with curriculum resources matters. As a result, understanding what teachers do with mathematics curriculum materials and why, as well as how their choices influence classroom activity, is critical for informing ongoing work surrounding the development of new programs, their adoption in the world of practice, and what students learn as a result.

Although this field of research on teachers’ use of curriculum materials is growing, it is still underdeveloped. Studies of teachers using textbooks in mathematics, reading, and history (e.g., Durkin, 1983; FitzGerald, 1979; Komoski, 1977) and the influence of textbooks on the curriculum taught (Kuhs & Freeman, 1979) began to emerge in the mid- to late 1970s. Still, interest in the questions underlying this research has waxed and waned over the years. Over time, researchers have gradually added to a collection of studies that offer insights into the teacher—curriculum relationship. Nevertheless, prior to the mid-1990s, this field never gathered momentum or cohered around a particular set of questions. Over the last decade, however, the field has grown tremendously, signaling increased interest in questions about how teachers use curriculum materials and whether and how newly designed materials can influence classroom practices and teaching more broadly.

Several converging phenomena have contributed to the growth of this field. The publication of the Standards (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 1989) and the nationwide interest generated by this document led to revisions of existing mathematics textbooks by commercial publishers and the development of many new curriculum programs. Most prominent among these development projects were those funded by the National Science Foundation [NSF]. These programs, commonly referred to as Standards-based or NSF-funded curriculum programs, were developed by mathematics educators and mathematicians and were designed to support the Standards.¹ These curriculum materials contain mathematical emphases (e.g., mathematical thinking and reasoning, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving in realistic contexts) and pedagogical approaches that were previously uncommon in textbooks published in the United States. Around the world, many countries took up comparable curriculum reform efforts at the same time.² Early use of Standards-based curriculum programs in the mid-1990s prompted considerable interest in how teachers used them. Between 1995 and 2006, over 25 articles on the topic appeared in major research journals, in addition to countless dissertations and conference presentations. (For reviews of these studies, see Remillard, 2005; Stein, Remillard, & Smith, 2007.)

Scholarship that focuses on mathematics teachers’ practices laid the ground-work for questions generated by these new materials. Since the mid-1980s, research on teacher cognition and teachers’ thought processes (e.g., Clark & Peterson, 1986; Thompson, 1984) has made a compelling case for viewing teachers as decision-makers, and teaching behaviors as rooted in teachers’ beliefs and knowledge. Since that time, a good deal of research has examined mathematics teachers’ classroom practices with an eye toward characterizing the complex work of teaching. Scholars naturally applied these frameworks to studies of teachers using and navigating novel curriculum materials.

Activity in the policy and practice arenas has also generated substantial interest in the potential impact of curriculum materials on teachers and teaching. In the current era of accountability and increased pressure brought about by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002), school districts and schools are under intense pressure to raise students’ achievement scores. As a result, many districts have begun to regulate mathematics teaching practices through mandating the use of a single curriculum program at each level or content area (Archer, 2005). As a result, there is considerable emphasis on the widespread adoption of new curriculum programs as the primary strategy for improving mathematics education. In many cases, the curriculum materials being adopted are Standards-based and are unfamiliar in form and content to most teachers.

As Standards-based and other new curriculum programs were being rolled out for their initial debuts in schools, researchers faced strong pressure to provide evidence of their impact on student learning (Schoenfeld, 2002). Although there was general interest in assessing the impact of the new programs, the pressure to produce results on student outcomes at this particular moment in history was intensified by both substantial skepticism about the value of Standards-based materials and the contemporary interest in using scientific evidence of effectiveness to guide curriculum program adoption decisions. In 2004, a National Research Council [NRC] panel charged with reviewing existing research on the success of existing curriculum programs found insufficient evidence of the effectiveness of any of the programs studied, “due to the restricted number of studies for any particular curriculum, limitations in the array of methods used, and the uneven quality of the studies” (p. 3). Among its recommendations for improving the research on programs’ effects was a call for consideration of the quality of teachers’ implementation. By making this assertion, the NRC panel acknowledged the distinction between the curriculum as written and the curriculum as enacted.

An Overview of the Book

Taking this distinction between the written and enacted curriculum as a starting place for this volume, we distributed a call for chapter proposals that would make both theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding the teacher as a critical link between the written and enacted curriculum. The majority of chapter proposals we received investigated elementary or middle school settings and materials, involved experienced classroom teachers (as opposed to prospective or beginning teachers), took place in classrooms in which Standards-based curriculum materials were being used, and drew on qualitative research methods. Indeed, these trends, represented in the set of final chapters selected for the book, reflect much of the research currently available in the field. Through the peer-review process, we were able to compile a set of high-quality chapters that, despite uneven representation across some of the categories listed above, address a range of theoretical and empirical issues, making valuable contributions to the field. The chapters are grouped into four parts, which we outline in the remainder of this section. In the following section, we describe what we see as the primary contributions that these chapters make to the field of research on teachers’ use of mathematics curriculum materials.

Part II begins by considering theoretical and conceptual frameworks and perspectives intended to guide research in the field. In Chapter 2, Brown draws on sociocultural perspectives to conceptualize the relationship between teachers and curriculum resources as akin to that of agent and tool. He uses this framing to examine different ways that teachers might draw on a curriculum resource. In Chapter 3, Stein and Kim identify and analyze two elementary curriculum programs’ features that are salient to their use across a large school system. They consider how levels of social and human capital are likely to influence teachers’ use of these features. The authors of Chapter 4, McClain, Zhao, Visnovska, and Bowen, draw on empirical data to articulate a framework that captures the interplay between teachers and texts in the context of school and districts. In Chapter 5, Chval, Chávez, Reys, and Tarr discuss conceptual and methodological considerations and challenges of studying textbook integrity. Remillard’s commentary (Chapter 6) synthesizes the constructs offered in these four chapters into a single framework, capturing the complex nature of the factors that influence the teacher—text relationship. In Chapter 7, Larson considers how these conceptual frameworks might influence the work of a curriculum decision-maker in a school district.

The chapters in Part III put the classroom context at the center of understanding the relationship between teachers and curriculum materials. In Chapter 8, Grant, Kline, Crumbaugh, Kim, and Cengiz examine how teachers elicit and extend student thinking in mathematically productive ways during whole-group discussions, and how different types of guidance provided by a teacher’s guide support teachers in doing so. With the aim of emphasizing the important role that teachers play in the curriculum development process, the El Barrio-Hunter College PDS Partnership Writing Collective (El Barrio Collective) (Chapter 9) describes their adaptations of a Standards-based curriculum program and makes recommendations for how curriculum developers might use teacher research (and teacher researchers) to inform their work. In Chapter 10, Herbel-Eisenmann uses classroom examples to theorize about the teacher—textbook—student relationship by examining teachers’ language choices that mediate this relationship. In Chapter 11, Eisenmann and Even compare the tasks used by a single teacher enacting the same curriculum materials in two different schools. The authors of Chapter 12, Ziebarth, Hart, Marcus, Ritsema, Schoen, and Walker, describe the negotiation processes between developers of curriculum materials and the teachers who pilot the materials during the revision of a Standards-based curriculum program. In his response to these chapters, Pimm (Chapter 13) points out that pedagogical intention is a central theme in each of these chapters and that making pedagogical intention explicit might shed light on the authority relationships described in the chapters. Schnepp’s response (Chapter 14) connects the issues raised by chapter authors to his experiences as a high school mathematics teacher, pointing out the limited opportunities most teachers have to reflect on these issues.

The chapters in Part IV examine critical issues related to curriculum material use that emerge for teachers at different stages of their careers. In Chapter 15, Behm and Lloyd analyze three student teachers’ interactions with mathematics curriculum materials and consider a number of factors that may play into the different approaches they take. In Chapter 16, Christou, Menon, and Philippou report on an investigation of the types of concerns that novice teachers communicate after using a new curriculum program. Silver, Ghousseini, Charalambous, and Mills (Chapter 17) consider teachers’ experience with curriculum materials later in their careers. They discuss a phenomenon, called the curriculum implementation plateau, observed in the work of mathematics teachers who are experienced users of Standards-based curriculum materials. In response to these chapters, Cooney (Chapter 18) discusses how teachers, when using Standards-based curriculum materials, are challenged to take advantage of “critical moments” in the classroom and explore multiple solutions to mathematics problems. From her perspective as a principal and teacher, Phillips (Chapter 19) draws attention to key issues from the chapters in Part IV: the potential for learning from student-teaching placements, preparation of teachers for curriculum material adoption, and support for sustainable change.

The chapters in Part V examine the relationship between teacher learning and development and curriculum material use. Chapters 20 and 21 provide accounts of small groups of middle school teachers collaborating to use Standards-based curriculum materials, with the support of university faculty. Doerr and Chandler-Olcott (Chapter 20) examine teachers’ experiences with the literacy demands of the materials, showing how, over time, they shifted from seeing the curriculum materials as barriers to students’ learning to seeing them as supporting language and mathematical learning. Roth McDuffie and Mather (Chapter 21) identify and discuss the “curricular reasoning” in which teachers engaged as they used curriculum materials for instruction: analyzing materials from learners’ perspectives, doing tasks together as learners, mapping learning trajectories, and revising plans based on instructional experiences with students. In Chapter 22, Drake and Sherin offer a method—namely their “curriculum strategies framework”—for characterizing changes in teachers’ use of curriculum materials over time. Jaworski’s commentary (Chapter 23) identifies compelling issues in the chapters related to the social settings of the classrooms studied, the research as a factor in what is studied, and assumptions made in curriculum resources. In Chapter 24, Davenport draws on the accounts in the chapters of Part V to offer her views about how school districts might support the learning of large numbers of teachers as they use Standards-based curriculum materials for mathematics instruction.

The Contribution to the Field

Because this book is the first compilation of research on teachers and curriculum materials, it provides us with the opportunity to highlight important themes that cut across the chapters and to...