Organization(s): Michigan Technological University, Brigham Young University, Western Michigan University
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (MTU Award) (BYU Award) (WMU Award)
Project Link: http://buildingonmosts.org/bld-projectdescription.html
Program: Discovery Research K-12 (DRK-12)
HRI Role: Evaluation
Project Description
BMOST follows an earlier project, MOST, with the same leadership team. The team developed the MOST Analytic Framework for identifying instances of student thinking that arise during whole-group classroom discussions that teachers can leverage to develop student understanding of important mathematics (i.e., MOSTs). The MOST Analytic Framework helps teachers and researchers attend to and interpret student thinking. In addition to developing the framework, the MOST team focused on conceptualizing core principles for how teachers could productively use MOSTs to further students’ mathematical understanding. To describe the instructional sequence of moves and decisions a teacher might make to capitalize on the student thinking of a MOST, they adopted the term Building Practice. The BMOST project is investigating how teachers enact the Building Practice when they respond to MOSTs. The research questions guiding the project are: 1) What does it look like to build on MOSTs in a way that coordinates the core principles underlying their productive use? 2) What are variations in how enacting the Building Practice elements coordinate the core principles? 3) What are teachers’ experiences in attempting to build on MOSTs?
Evaluation Services
HRI’s evaluation includes giving feedback on the project’s data collection, analysis, and dissemination. HRI is also developing assessment tools to measure specific aspects of teacher knowledge as they participate in the project’s professional development.
