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2004 NSF K-12 Math, Science, and Technology Curriculum Developers Conference

Research and Evaluation During the EMPower Materials Development Phase

Mary Jane Schmitt

The EMPower Project's goal is to extend K-12 mathematics curricular reforms to adults and out-of-school youth, especially those who enroll in remedial and developmental adult basic education, high school equivalency and community college programs. The curriculum has potential use in other environments: workplace, parent, and para-professional education programs.

Over the course of four years (2000-2004), a collaborative group of teachers and researchers with expertise in adult numeracy education and K-12 mathematics reform has developed and field tested contextualized curriculum units organized around the topic areas of number sense; patterns, functions, and relations; geometry and measurement; and data, statistics, and graphs. The team has created a model for a mathematics curriculum that offers content consistent with the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) and other frameworks that are adult-focused, such as the Equipped for the Future Content Standards (Stein, 2000), the Massachusetts ABE Curriculum Frameworks for Mathematics and Numeracy (Massachusetts Department of Education, 2001), and the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey numeracy framework (Gal, vanGroenestijn, Manly, Schmitt, & Tout, 1999). The curriculum fosters a pedagogy of learning for understanding; embeds teacher support throughout; and has a structure that is transformative yet realistic for existing adult education multi-leveled classrooms. EMPower's content and pedagogy profoundly challenge prevalent instructional practice in remedial mathematics education.

The project was conceived as a multi-dimensional intervention: curriculum development, professional development and research. EMPower uses research and evaluation at all stages of the developmental process, both to inform the writing of the curriculum and to understand what changes might stem from its use. Evaluation activities have helped to highlight the impacts on students, classrooms, and teachers. Although findings are preliminary and based on limited samples, methods, and designs, they are promising.

Guiding Questions

• What is the range of mathematical understandings within a class and across classes?
• What are the shifts in teachers' facilitation styles and views of students' mathematical understandings?
• What supports change?

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. ESI-0352345). Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.