Challenging Courses, Student Achievement, and Barriers to Implementation
The focus of this work is investigating the relationship between challenging inquiry-based classroom instruction and student achievement. We investigate this within a metropolitan partnership (including nine school districts, an educational non-profit, and two institutes of higher education) targeted on mathematics education at grades five through eight. The partnership involves all community stakeholders-administrators, teachers, parents and the public-in the work of improving mathematics education. A central component of the model is a series of nine-day summer courses for in-service teachers that focus on mathematics content while modeling challenging inquiry-based instruction. Partnership members collaborated to develop a working definition of challenging courses and curricula (CCC) as those that are focused on: (1) big mathematical ideas; (2) inquiry and reflection; (3) oral and written communication; and (4) developing productive disposition [CMMS]. In developing this definition, the partnership drew on the National Research Council's description of the "Intertwined Strands of Proficiency" in Adding It Up [NRC], the "Teaching for Understanding: Guiding Principles" articulated in Mathematics: Model Curriculum Guide [CA], the National Academies workshops on Challenging Courses and Curricula [CCC1], [CCC2], as well as other sources including [NCSM], [NCTM], [NRC2], [NRC3], [Parker], [Weiss], and [Weiss2].
