San Francisco Field Site

Current Research Collaborations

• What classroom practices lead to student proficiency with word problems in algebra?

  A SERP-orchestrated collaboration between SFUSD practitioners and researchers from the University of California at Berkeley is developing innovative instructional approaches aimed at helping middle school mathematics teachers work more successfully with their students on algebraic problems.

  Timeline: November 2007 to present

  District Collaborators:
  Marian Currell, Program Administrator, The Algebra Project
  Jeanne D’Arcy, Supervisor, Mathematics and Science
  Carline Ryan, Program Administrator, K-12 Mathematics
  Ricki Tai, Content Specialist, Middle School Mathematics
  Emily Vedder, Content Specialist, Elementary School Mathematics

  Teacher Collaborators:
  Rena Frantz, 7th grade, Roosevelt Middle School
  Norman Mattox, 6th grade, James Lick Middle School
  Scott McIntosh, 8th grade, Willie L. Brown Jr. Academy College Preparatory School
  Alison Oliver, 8th grade, A.P. Giannini Middle School
  Jennifer Gallardo Payne, 7th / 8th grade, Herbert Hoover Middle School
  Shauna Poong, 8th grade, Marina Middle School
  Elaine Tam, 6th grade, Alice Fong Yu Alternative Elementary School
  Jonathan Woahn, 6th/7th grade, Willie L. Brown Jr. Academy College Preparatory
  School

  Researchers:
  Cynthia Coburn, Associate Professor of Education, UC Berkeley
  Phil Daro, Director, SERP
  Yan Liu, Assistant Director, SERP
  Nicole Louie, Graduate student, UC Berkeley
  Jose Sanchez, Graduate student, UC Berkeley
  Alan Schoenfeld, Professor of Education, UC Berkeley
  Kim Seashore, Graduate student, UC Berkeley
  Niral Shah, Graduate student, UC Berkeley

  Meaningful engagement with word problems can improve students’ performance later in Algebra I and beyond. They are of critical importance in terms of students’ mathematical development and understanding, and they play an important role in student success on high-stakes tests. In designing new instructional approaches, this collaborative team has deliberately avoided critical mistakes that have characterized improvement efforts of the past—including developing interventions that are “indigestible” for everyday teaching or that require major changes in textbook adoptions.

  Instead, the instructional approaches are designed to be small but catalytic; they prompt teachers to make relatively small changes to their teaching practices, which have a powerful impact on the way teachers think about their teaching and about student learning. They can be used with existing curricula regardless of teaching styles.

  SERP is also designing an innovative approach to scaling up these changes to middle schools throughout the district by introducing these newly developed instructional approaches into teachers’ existing social networks. These networks include those organized by district mathematics leaders and by the cadre of expert teachers co-developing the new practices with SERP. The goal is to create a context that is supportive of change and local expertise that helps to support it. Leveraging teachers’ pre-existing social networks to spread approaches through schools and the district has the potential to yield a pattern of scale up and durability of adoption very different from approaches more commonly deployed.