Highlighting Content and Pedagogy in the Arizona Teacher Institute Master's Degree Program

Authors: Erin Turner, Rebecca McGraw

Overview of the Arizona Teacher Institute: The Arizona Teacher Institute (ATI) is a partnership between the University of Arizona (UA) and the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) aimed at deepening the mathematical understanding and leadership skills of middle school mathematics teachers, with a particular focus on middle school teachers who are elementary certified. The core of the ATI is the development of a permanent Master's Degree Program in Middle School Mathematics Leadership.  Other components include a certificate in mathematics teacher mentoring for secondary-certified teachers and a postdoctoral fellowship in teacher preparation for recent mathematics Ph.D.'s. The focus for middle school teachers is on increasing their mathematics knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, the focus for secondary teachers on leadership and mentoring, and the focus postdoctoral fellows on increasing their understanding of student thinking and grooming them to work in the fields of pre-service and in-service teacher preparation. To date, two cohorts of local middle school teachers have begun the Master's Degree, four secondary-certified teachers have participated in the certificate program, and two mathematics postdoctoral fellows have worked on the project.

Theory behind the design of the Arizona Teacher Institute: Research suggests that teacher professional development should focus both on content knowledge development and development of knowledge of how children think about and learn content (Cohen & Hill, 1998; Corcoran, 1995; Loucks-Horsley, Hewson, Love, & Stiles, 1998; Kennedy, 1998). Garet, Porter, Desimore, Birman, &Yoon (2001) found that effective professional development focuses on "academic subject matter (content), gives teachers opportunities for 'hands-on' work (active learning), and is integrated into the daily life of the school (coherence)" (p. 935). The Arizona Teacher Institute provides participants with opportunities to develop such knowledge through a) Core mathematics content courses for taught by teams of university faculty and master secondary-certified teachers, b) Education coursework that focuses on research on student learning in mathematics, and on leadership for equity in mathematics education, c) Providing secondary-certified teachers taking the Certificate in Mathematics Teacher Mentoring with the opportunity to deepen their content knowledge of mathematics above the high school level and to think about student learning through interaction with middle school teachers, and d) Providing mathematics faculty and post-doctoral fellows with opportunities to develop skills for teacher preparation courses.

Research also suggests that effective professional development activities should form a coherent whole (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001) and be "both sustained over time and involves a substantial number of hours" (Garet et al., 2001, p.933). Coherence across program components is a key feature of the Arizona Teacher Institute. The Master's program provides a sustained, multi-year professional development experience for middle school teachers, with a total of over 30 units, or about 1500 hours, of instruction in mathematics and pedagogy, and fieldwork.

Finally, the design of the content courses in the Master's program, and the fieldwork in the third year of that program, incorporates Arizona's Professional Teacher Standards.  These standards call for a focus on Arizona's academic standards, attention to the learning climate, attention to management of instruction, assessment of learning and communication of results, and attention to the academic knowledge needed to teach. An explicit focus of the fieldwork year is using what has been learned in the first two years to provide students with a more challenging curriculum.