This study does exactly what its title promises. Specifically, analysts study two instructional practices in mathematics: (1) engaging students in discourse with the teacher and their peers to make sense of problems and explain answers and (2) using appropriate mathematical vocabulary. Importantly, these practices also reflect the Mathematical Practices of the Common Core math standards, specifically those that require students to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others and those that require students to attend to precision, including the use of appropriate mathematical vocabulary. The study occurs as part of a larger evaluation of Project M2, an advanced math curriculum (i.e., it includes content that typically appears at higher grade levels or content studied in depth with challenging task and problems) covering geometry and measurement in grades K–2. The final sample includes thirty-four K–2 teachers and their 560 students who participated in a field test from 2008–11. Teachers were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups. The former attended roughly ten days of professional development, after which they were observed weekly and rated on fidelity of implementation to the content and the two instructional strategies of interest. Students were administered the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) as a pretest and control measure. Bottom line: Teachers’ implementation scores for verbal communication and encouraging use of math language—the two strategies—significantly predicted math achievement as gauged by the students’ percentage gain scores on an outcome measure known as the Open Response assessment. For example, if a kindergarten student with an average ITBS standard score on the pretest had a teacher who was rated as “always” implementing the math vocabulary practices, that student would be predicted to gain an additional 72 percentage points pre- to post-test on the Open Response Assessment. On the face of it, this appears to be useful data bolstering the evidentiary claims of the CCSS math standards. But the observation and outcome measures are questionable because both were developed by the analysts specifically for the Project M2 evaluation; no good standardized measures existed at the early grades to assess achievement in geometry and measurement, so they had to create their own. In other words, this step was necessary—but unfortunately, customizing measures for a particular intervention casts doubt on the credibility of the findings.
SOURCE: Janine M. Firmender, M. Katherine Gavin, and D. Betsy McCoach, “Examining the Relationship Between Teachers’ Instructional Practices and Students’ Mathematics Achievement,” Journal of Advanced Academics, Volume 25, Number 3 (August 2014).
