Teachers’ Use of Standards-Based Instructional Materials Karen D. King New York University Abstract The purpose of the study is: To explore the ways teachers use Standards-based instructional materials when they are mandated as the materials to use, The reasons teachers give for their choices in ways to use the materials, and The relationship between the ways teachers use the materials and students’ achievement The sample of middle grades mathematics teachers comes from 39 K-8 or 6-8 schools in an urban school district in the Northeast. Research Questions Using a modification of the framework for task implementation (Stein & Smith, 1998), the study examines the following research questions: (1)Do teachers perceive mandated instructional materials as a support for improving instruction? (2)How do teachers adapt the instructional materials to attempt to meet the needs of their students and why? (3)What are the school and district level supports and barriers to using the instructional materials identified by teachers? (4)What is the relationship between student achievement and ways teachers implement the instructional materials? Significance This study is framed not as “fidelity of implementation” as a measure in evaluating the curriculum, but instead framed as “teachers as decision-makers in their classrooms” and trying to better understand: o The decisions teachers make, particularly around the adaptation and use of the designated instructional materials to support instruction o The reasons for these decisions o The impact on student achievement In particular, we are trying to understand these issues in the context of urban classrooms where teachers perceive unique constraints on teaching, but have had professional development to support curricular implementation District Curriculum Vision and Teacher Use Just because a district says they are implementing CMP does not mean that CMP is being implemented due to substantive modification at the district level followed by additional modification at the teacher level The district vision of CMP implementation, as reflected in the pacing guide, differs substantially from the curricula sequence suggested by the materials. Some of the factors influencing the organization of the pacing guide as reported by the district include : the state assessments, limited coverage of topic in prior grades, and ordering units to provide teachers with sufficient opportunity to cover the most important ones. Teacher adaptation is a general rule across the grades with teacher adaptation more pronounced in the 7 th and 8 th grades than in the 6 th grade The highest level of use “as is” with no modification lie in the range of 28%-39% and the range goes down substantially from there In some cases, adaptation and modification reflects teachers’ attempts to increase alignment with the instructional materials as opposed to the district pacing guide, which had significant rearrangements of the units Reason teachers give for their adaptations are based on perceived instructional and content needs of their students as well as state testing. Administration and district influence as not a major influence of implementation decisions for most teachers. Explanation for unit implementation modifications seem to relate to teachers: having concerns about students’ preparation for the topics, adding units on algebra, addressing topics from prior grades, and making topic selections based on state assessment. Future Directions in Analysis Relationship of our findings to issues of teacher professionalization and teachers’ professional trajectories Use differences based on teacher characteristics, particularly special education versus general education teachers HLM analysis of profiles of teacher use related to student achievement Opportunity to learn topics with high cognitive demand Relationship between instructional practice and profiles of implementation Principle Investigator: Karen D. King, Co-Pis:Monica Mitchell, May Samuels, Carole Mulligan Project Team: Candace Barriteau Phaire, Jessica Tybrusky, Mellie Torres, Robert Tobias, Ognjen Simic, Ashaki Coleman (Evaluator), Jill Feldman (Evaluator) Data Collection During the project year, the project team surveyed all middle school mathematics teachers in 39schools building with the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum and a project designed CMP Survey about instructional practice, content, and the ways in which they adapt and supplement the Connected Mathematics Project instructional materials and why. The web-based surveys were administered in March 2009 with a May 2009 makeup administration Additionally, five teachers at two schools served as case study schools to provide a richer sense of how and why teachers adapt and supplement instructional materials. In October 2008, each teacher responsible for teaching middle grades mathematics has been videorecorded and observed using a modification of the Middle Grades Mathematics Observation Scales over two consecutive days, including pre- and post-observation interviews, to examine how the teacher uses the CMP instructional materials in his or her planning and enactment of a lesson. The project also collected student achievement data in the form of scale scores on the state test for all students and benchmark assessments in case study classes to provide further information on the impact of instruction on students’ learning. We also collected district curriculum documents, state standards, and conducted interviews with district mathematics administrators to understand the district vision of the curriculum and how that vision differed from the curriculum as outlined in the materials, as these differences might influence teachers’ use of the materials. Two Profiles of Teacher Use from Case Study Analysis Implementer – Technical implementation of the written lessons provided by the teacher materials with small adaptations Clear use of student pages (e.g., students read aloud from student pages during instruction) Strong use of the teacher materials and ancillary materials Varying quality of use of standards-based instruction (based on observations) Designer – Uses the materials, in conjunction with others, to design and teach a lesson Use of student materials as a source of problems, but less reliance on teacher materials Used the materials for the goal in the broader curriculum Adaptation to their instructional realities (McClain & Cobb, 2003) Varying quality of use of standards-based instruction (based on observations)