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This report updates the previous WWC report on CMP that was released on the WWC website in November 2004. Since the release of the previous report, the WWC has updated its evidence standards and developed peer-reviewed procedures for addressing certain methodological flaws in original studies, such as mismatch between the unit of assignment and the unit analysis and lack of adjustment for multiple comparisons. These standards and procedures, when applicable, have been applied to studies included in the original CMP review. No new studies were identified for this updated report.
The CMP was developed at Michigan State University by Glenda Lappan, James T. Fey, William F. Fitzgerald, Susan N. Friel, and Elizabeth D. Phillips. Email: cmp@math. msu.edu. Web: http://connectedmath.msu.edu. Telephone: (517) 432-2870. The curriculum is distributed by Pearson Prentice Hall. Web: http://phcatalog.pearson.com.
Pilot editions of CMP were used between 1991 and 1997 by approximately 160 teachers and 45,000 students in diverse settings across the United States. As of September 2004, it had been implemented in 2,462 school districts, covering all 50 states.
This problem-centered curriculum is based on an inquiry model of instruction, which consists of three phases: launch, explore, and summarize. In the first phase, the teacher launches the problem with the whole class, introduces new ideas, clarifies definitions, reviews old concepts, and connects the problem to students' past experiences. In the explore phase, students work individually, in pairs or small groups, or occasionally as a whole class to solve the problem. In the summarize phase, students discuss their solutions as well as the strategies that they used to approach the problem, organize the data, and find the solution.
Intended as a three-year mathematics curriculum, CMP covers grades 6–8, providing eight student units for each grade level. Each student unit is organized around an important mathematical idea or cluster of related ideas and is divided into several investigations, with each investigation containing a series of problems. The implementation plan is based on a 45–60 minute class period and a 180-day school year. The CMP provides teacher guides specifically designed for each student unit. The teacher guides include discussions of the mathematics of the unit, instructional strategies, and assessment resources. The developer suggests that when a district uses the curriculum for the first time, it should establish a support system to all the CMP teachers in a building.
According to Pearson Prentice Hall, the publisher, the most recent edition of the CMP costs $8.47 per student and $20.97 per teacher unit. See the publisher for costs for other resources.
|Institute of Education Sciences
