NSF Awards: 2008997, 2010202, 2010269, 2010178
In this video, we introduce the EQ-STEMM project and describe our focus on Strengthening Teaching and Advancing Equity through Math Modeling in the Elementary Grades. Principal Investigators from each of our four research sites describe how mathematical modeling is a lever for equity, as it empowers teachers and students and positions the knowledge and experiences that students bring to the classroom as resources to support engagement and learning. We introduce our equity-oriented framework (del Rosario Zavala & Aguirre, 2021), and use examples from professional development sessions with teachers and from modeling activities in elementary classrooms to describe how specific pillars of our framework guide our work. For example, we highlight professional learning tools, such as a set of teacher moves for advancing equitable participation and modeling competencies. We also describe examples of teacher-developed modeling tasks that connect to students’ knowledge and identities, and provide opportunities for students to share their findings and enact agency. Our video includes commentary from EQ-STEMM participants – teachers and instructional coaches– who highlight how mathematical modeling has empowered and advanced their work with students. We end with an invitation to visit our project website for additional resources and information.
Emmanuel Nti-Asante
Excellent project
Jennifer Suh
Professor of Math Education
Welcome to our EQSTEMM project-Advancing Equity through Math Modeling in the Elementary Grades, where we focus on mathematical modeling as a powerful lever for equity and civic empathy in elementary math classrooms. We have been working with teachers across different geographic regions with four different university partners. In modeling tasks that connect to authentic contexts in schools and communities, students from diverse cultural, linguistic and geographic backgrounds draw on their experiences and mathematical ideas to make sense of problems, to empathize with others, and to take action.
Our project includes a blended professional development program with a series of modules that have both asynchronous and in person learning activities. Please learn more about our project at our website http://eqstemm.org
Thank you for visiting and please share with us how some of your work connect with our project!
Zachary Bettersworth
Your project leverages some really important ideas and theories in a practical and impactful way. I was curious if you could share some of your findings on the impact of your mathematical modeling approach. I would be interested to learn about the long-term impact of such instruction on STEM-intending students. Thank you for sharing!
Jennifer Suh
Professor of Math Education
Thanks for your question. Introducing the mathematical modeling process to teachers and elementary students has allowed for us to develop the practice of problem posing which is pivotal to any STEM field or learning in general. As we work with our teachers, we introduce routines that really invite students to be problem posers - who take a real world situation and think about questions that mathematize situations. For example, many of our community based mathematical modeling tasks look at issues locally that matter to students and their community. Some of our math modeling tasks focused on food insecurity in the community that led to lessons where students examined local data on food insecure population, USDA food database to learn about modeling cost of food for an average family which led to a coin harvest to make meal baskets. Another inquiry on this same issue led to a class collecting data on how much food was being wasted at school cafeterias by creating a plan to assess how they would quantify food waste. These modeling tasks followed an inquiry approach starting with problem posing, considering variables, creating a model to describe or predict a phenomenon (like food waste) and then creating a plan to improve the condition or taking action in their own way. We have found that authentic tasks like this give our students an opportunity to develop their inquiry skills and see mathematics as being a powerful tool to make important decisions in our life and take action towards the goal of Zero Hunger. This is just one example. I hope this gives you some ideas of how it may help STEM-intending students. Check out some other tasks that we have engaged in at https://www.eqstemm.org/mm-tasks
Eva Thanheiser
This project looks amazing ... I am excited to learn from you all!
Jennifer Suh
Professor of Math Education
Eva,
I am so excited about your project too! Our groups should definitely chat more :)
Eva Thanheiser
Yes let's schedule a meeting sometime!
David Kung
Director of Policy
I love the mix of culturally relevant pedagogy with math modeling.
My experience with working with kids on modeling is that, while it's engaging to many, some students who have excelled in a more "traditional" approach are disenchanted by the modeling approach. Did you find that with your population?
Mary Alice Carlson
Associate Professor of Mathematics Education
Thank you for your question! Teachers are telling us that modeling gives them chances to see competencies in children that they don't see in traditional mathematics lessons. We haven't yet seen children disenchanted by the modeling approach, but sometimes there is an adjustment. Students who are used to seeing the goal of mathematics as finding the right answer have to adjust to seeing the goal as finding the useful solution, or the solution that addresses the question. Of course, the really exciting part is that we find out that there can be different ways of approaching the same question and thus more than one useful solution!
Noelani Ogasawara Morris
Demonstration Teacher
I love the connection of this project to real life situations and challenges that impact the lives of the students. It also engages them in a variety of ways to problem solve and have a voice in decisions being made based on sound evidence and mathematical reasoning. I also use Notice and Wonder warm up tasks in my classroom, which is based in the philosophies of CGI. However, I have never pushed myself further to utilize the "mirror" vs. "lens" idea to build a math lesson that might introduce a new space of the world and cultures to some of my students. Your website is so resourceful and I look forward in engaging with it to enhance my own teaching practices.
Mary Alice Carlson
Associate Professor of Mathematics Education
Thank you so much for your comments. I agree. The "mirror" and "lens" approach to looking at curriculum and students' experiences in mathematics classrooms is so powerful. I'm also so glad that you got to engage with our website!
Noelani Ogasawara Morris
Ayanna Shivers
Thanks for sharing!
Jennifer McMurrer
This project and your study sounds very exciting! Can you share more about the locales where you are working and building these resources for teachers? Thanks!
Mary Alice Carlson
Associate Professor of Mathematics Education
Sure! We are a multi-site project working with schools in urban and suburban cities, as well as smaller “rural-adjacent” towns. Our sites also include districts with diverse student populations and a high number of emergent bilingual students. Our goal is to implement in a variety of settings so we can learn about adaptations teachers make in order to reflect strengths and opportunities in their own communities.
Myriam Steinback
Consultant
Your project is very exciting - modeling is compelling because it's interesting and real; not a contrived story. Teachers facilitating learning with modeling as a tool for learning need your PD. What types of challenges are you noticing teachers having, and how are you supporting them?
Mary Alice Carlson
Associate Professor of Mathematics Education
Many of the dilemmas teachers face revolve around supporting students in using their knowledge of community and context in a mathematical space, all while helping students maintain ownership of the modeling task. We are working on a variety of teaching/learning routines that help build students' modeling competencies and also help teachers develop a set of "teacher moves" that they can choose from as they guide modeling tasks. Some examples of the routines include:
We will have more information about these routines on our website as our project progresses.
Alejandra Duarte
What an exciting project! I love the authenticity of the contexts in the lesson resources, and the emphasis on modeling and discourse of the mathematics, and the routines to build thinking about modeling are genius! I think the PD modules will be especially helpful - engaging PD that supports & advances practice is desperately needed! I'm curious about how teachers are supported within the project in terms of being able to think about students' work from a strengths-based lens. I imagine it must be infused throughout, and is a major part of Modules 2-4 but would love to know more specifics.
Mary Alice Carlson
Associate Professor of Mathematics Education
Yes! Brining a strengths-based mindset is a big part of our work. In fact, one of our modules is subtitled "Seeing Strengths in Student Work." Throughout the modules, we encourage participants to bring a mindset of curiosity about student work and contributions. Modeling in classroom settings is most powerful when we see students making different choices and assumptions, so we encourage teachers to maintain a degree of openness in the tasks themselves, and try to equip teachers with "teacher moves" that help them respond to and build on student contributions. We will have more about these teacher moves on our website as the project continues.
Jacob Wolf
Thanks for sharing this project!
Could you share more about the teachers who are involved in your project and how much experience they had with mathematical modeling prior to this involvement? Additionally, it would be great to hear more about how you introduce the practice of modeling and why it is important to teachers who have less experience teaching it. Our project focuses on making computational models of science phenomena, but the modeling process highlighted in your video is very similar to the one we use with students and teachers in our project.
Erin Turner
Professor
Definitely! This year we worked with two groups of teachers. Our primary 'cohorts' were teachers with no prior experience in modeling. Those were the teachers who participated in the professional development. We also worked with a cohort of "expert" teachers - teachers who have participated in previously professional development initiatives focused on modeling. These teachers helped us to produce multi-media cases and video clips of modeling lessons that we used in the professional development with the new cohorts. In some cases, the expert teachers also supported the new cohorts directly, via their role as instructional coaches in the district, etc.. We found this to be incredibly helpful as it supported interest and buy in from our teachers who were new to modeling. We have found that many teachers who are new to modeling are looking for ways to make math more relevant to students, and to connect to authentic issues in their students' communities -- modeling provides an avenue for making these connections which teachers find exciting.
Jacob Wolf
Jacob Wolf
Thanks for your response, Erin. We are getting ready to enter the 3rd year of our project and bring on new teachers. We've been thinking about the best ways to incorporate the experience of our teacher partners who have been with us from the beginning, and your case study ideas could be really helpful for this!
Ho-Chieh Lin
Thank you for sharing your work with concrete examples! I can see the EQSTEMM project engages children. I was curious about how you analyze power and participation. :)