Practitioner-Centered Research: NCTM,
SERP, and Practices Worthy of Attention
Pamela L. Paek, Ph.D.
Philip Uri Treisman, Ph.D.
Charles A. Dana Center, The University of Texas at Austin
NCTM Research Presession
Salt Lake City, UT
April 9, 2008
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Performance Differences
• There are enormous differences in how students
perform in urban districts with similar
demographies.
• How can these differences be so large?
• How can we understand the magnitude of these
differences?
• To what extent are the performance differences
due to differences in district strategies or
practices?
• To what extent are the performance differences
due to state policy?
2
Eighth-Grade Performance on NAEP
Mathematics by Ethnicity
NAEP Mathematics Score
300
290
288
281
280
270
240
291
284
277
270
Basic Cut Point = 261
260
250
289
259
246
237
230
1990
249
251
253
252
262
265
260
255
244
237
1992
240
1996
2000
2003
2005
2007
Year
White
Black
Hispanic
3
Comparison of Selected State NAEP
Mathematics Performances: 8th Grade
NAEP Mathematics Score
290
286
285
281
280
277
275
273
270
270
269
270
267
265
CA
NY
TX
Nation
265
263
261
260
255
260
258
256
1990
1992
1996
2000
2003
2005
2007
Year
4
Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) Performance of
Eighth-Grade Public School Students on NAEP Mathematics
City
2003
2005
2007
Austin
N/A
281
283
Charlotte
279*
281
283
Nation
276*
278*
280
Boston
262*
270*
276
Houston
264*
267*
273
San Diego
264*
270
272
New York City
266
267
270
Large Central City
262*
265*
269
Chicago
254*
258
260
Cleveland
253
249*
257
Los Angeles
245*
250*
257
Atlanta
244*
245*
256
District of Columbia
243*
245*
248
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District Practices?
• If some of these performances are due to
district practices, which practices are the
most promising?
• There’s a related issue: What are districts
actually working on?
• These two issues are not necessarily the
same and can differ district to district (e.g.,
centralizing vs. decentralizing practices)
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Addressing District Problems
Practices Worthy of Attention (PWOA)
and the Strategic Education Research
Partnership (SERP)
• Both of these projects examine what problems districts
are tackling. PWOA looks at which problems are being
addressed in innovative, promising ways, and SERP
investigates promising solutions to district challenges
(SERP).
• There is a need to surface promising innovations and
solutions to district challenges.
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Research and Practice
• Have not been well connected (Heid et al., 2007)
• Difficult for practitioners to locate and implement
findings from research (Seeley, 2005)
• No magic cures from research (Silver, 1990)
• Knowledge of practitioners has been an
underutilized resource
• Research does not have direct application to
answering concerns from the field
• Research results are not context free (e.g., class
size reduction)
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Pairing Research and Practice
Three main efforts are being conducted in
mathematics to help improve research’s
influence on practice:
• NCTM’s Linking Research and Practice
• Strategic Education Research Partnership
• Practices Worthy of Attention
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NCTM LRP
NCTM formed the linking research and
practice (LRP) task force to:
• Provide an “expeditious, fluid, sustainable
process by which practitioners can quickly
have access to research findings that can
inform and support their classroom practices”
• Help researchers and practitioners collaborate
on research agendas that will positively
influence practice
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LRP Communication
Research Analyses, Briefs, and Clips (ABCs):
• Analyses are syntheses of current research
responding to questions from the field: summaries
of research showing evidence and what has yet to
be resolved.
• Briefs focus on subquestions from the research
analyses with commentary but not as much detail.
• Clips are short documents that state major
conclusions from the research analyses.
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LRP Framework
• • • • The LRP framework embodies cyclical
communication:
Teacher leaders (aka instructional leaders)
convey research results to practitioners.
Those results are implemented into research
advice in classrooms.
Additional needs from practitioners are conveyed
back to researchers.
Researchers conduct research and feed the
results to teacher leaders who take the
information back back into classrooms, and the
cycle continues.
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SERP
Strategic Education Research Partnership
(SERP) believes in developing two main
components in education:
1. Field sites where researchers, practitioners,
and designers work in practice settings
2. Coordinating capacity, in the form of an
organization responsible for nurturing longterm collaborations, accumulation of
knowledge, and diffusion of results across
the nation
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SERP Field Sites
• • • • Goal is to have 12–15 field sites in varied
settings (urban, suburban, rural) to
Observe, explain, document, replicate, and
evaluate practice as a source of new
knowledge
Define problems and test solutions in context
Address unimagined complications and
unintended consequences
Train new researchers and practitioners in
“use-inspired” R&D
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SERP Coordinating Capacity
• Steers a long-term program of work
• Replicates promising work in different
settings
• Develops common tools for practice and
research
• Maintains quality standards
• Builds effective communication networks
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PWOA
Practices worthy of attention are
• Practices that show promise in improving students’
secondary mathematics performance
• Practices currently used by schools and districts
across the nation that have been developed to
provide quality mathematics teaching and learning
for all students, especially those who have faced
challenges in succeeding in mathematics
• Focused on documenting practitioners’ applications
of theory to practice in secondary mathematics
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PWOA Stem From District Concerns
• Helping all students succeed in algebra
• Offering upper-level high school
mathematics courses that provide
preparation and a smooth transition to
higher education and the workforce
• Addressing the mathematics needs of
special populations
• Identifying model instructional programs
• Strengthening teacher capacity and growing
the supply of teachers
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PWOA Goals
• To better understand innovative practices in
particular settings that show promise of improving
secondary mathematics teaching and learning and
mark these practices for further development and
scientific inquiry
• To identify common themes across practices that
can be used to strengthen student achievement in
urban education systems across the country
• To aid practitioners in strengthening their work by
providing them with research support to help them
more rigorously evaluate how well these practices
are working
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Summary
• LRP is developing a medium for translating
research into ABCs for practitioner consumption
and use
• SERP catalyzes interaction by including
researcher and practitioner interaction, in
addition to designers, entrepreneurs, and tool
builders.
• PWOA starts with practitioner work to build
research and evaluation efforts around
practitioner concerns and practices
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Conclusions
• A new wave of ideas is emerging about how to shape
—and increase the effectiveness of—the interactions
between mathematics education researchers and
practitioners.
• A key idea is that researchers should incorporate
practitioner needs into their thinking as research
begins, not only to gain practitioner buy-in, but also to
enable practitioners to make practical gains based on
the research being conducted.
• By keeping the practitioner as a key focus and
audience, researchers can rethink how best to engage
practitioners and disseminate information to them that
can be incorporated into their practice.
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Why Should We Do This?
• By including practitioners in the development
of research agendas, we can find ways to
immediately address the pressing issues that
practitioners face and provide the
infrastructure and technical expertise to
research some of these issues.
• We must move forward in finding tangible,
achievable ways to disseminate and distribute
this information to improve practitioners’
practices and, consequently, student learning.
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Five Questions
1. How does practitioner-centered research resonate
with you?
2. What experiences have you had with practitionercentered research?
3. Which of the ideas in the projects we have discussed
seem to maximize the productive interaction of
researchers with practitioners?
4. What other ways can researchers and practitioners
work together to improve research to inform teacher
practices?
5. What are other lessons learned about conducting
practitioner-centered research in education systems?
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Thank You for Your Time
A full report on the PWOA work (including an
executive summary, report on building teacher
capacity, report on raising student achievement,
and the 22 profiled sites) can be found at http://
www.utdanacenter.org/pwoa.
More information on SERP can be found at http://
www.serpinstitute.org/.
More information on NCTM’s LRP work can be
found at http://www.nctm.org/news/default.aspx.
If you have any questions or comments, please
contact me at Pamela.Paek@mail.utexas.edu.
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