The Connecticut Partnership aims to build teachers’ capacity to use research-based instructional strategies to facilitate mathematics learning for middle grade English learners/multilingual learners (ELs/MLs), with the long-term goal of increasing middle grade MLs’ mathematics achievement. Many mathematics teachers in Connecticut may not have adequate resources and training to ensure access to rigorous mathematics learning opportunities for the ELs/MLs in their classes, with outcomes reflected in recent Connecticut Smarter Balanced Assessment for Mathematics. These outcomes have also been seen nationally, for example on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, where EL/ML students’ scores are significantly below those of non-ELs/MLs. While unpacking these standardized assessment results is complex, it is clear that mathematics educators would benefit from resources and support to facilitate their work with EL/ML students. Connecticut educators can benefit from more professional development opportunities that specifically focus on supporting EL/ML students’ successful mathematics participation and learning. The Connecticut Partnership is addressing these needs.
In this partnership, REL Northeast & Islands collaborates with the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) and representatives from several education organizations in Connecticut that focus on mathematics education and teaching and learning for ELs/MLs. The partnership facilitates training and technical assistance for district leaders to analyze data, learn about research-based mathematics strategies for ELs/MLs, and create logic models and action plans to improve mathematics learning for middle grade ELs/MLs in their districts, including in line with Connecticut’s statewide EL/ML Framework. REL Northeast & Islands has also worked with CSDE on an applied research study that gathered data to study a professional learning program for grades 6 and 7 mathematics teachers with ELs/MLs in their classes. Current work for the study includes analyzing initial student data on mathematics attitudes, problem-solving, and achievement, and facilitating an additional cohort of the professional learning program. Furthermore, REL Northeast & Islands and its partners are enacting a dissemination plan to spread awareness and deepen understanding about, support access to, and facilitate sharing of partnership resources—for example by creating and sharing an infographic that reviews evidence-based strategies for ELs/MLs in the mathematics classroom.
Current projects
This applied research study is focused on the Visual Access to Mathematics professional development program (VAM PD), an online and face-to-face professional learning experience designed to support middle grades mathematics teachers who have both multilingual learners and monolingual students in their classes. Specifically, the study is engaging cohorts of teachers in the VAM PD and investigating students’ proportional reasoning problem-solving ability, facility in using visual representations in the problem-solving, and mathematics attitudes.
This project is enhancing the knowledge and skills of Connecticut district and school leaders so they can make plans and enact strategies to strengthen middle grade math instruction for English learners/multilingual learners (ELs/MLs) in their districts. Through a series of workshops, mathematics coaches, MLL specialists, math department heads, curriculum directors, and other leaders with responsibilities for supporting middle grade math teachers create logic models, analyze district data, learn about evidence-based practices, and create district action plans to support improvements in the mathematics learning experience for middle grade Els/MLs.
Completed projects
No projects at this time.