|
As a public research university, Maryland should gauge a measure of its success by how enriched the surrounding community is by its presence. How are faculty members sharing what they are discovering? What applicable research is being offered to teachers?
In the area of kindergarten through 12th grade education, the university answers these questions in a myriad of ways. While preparing new teachers to take on classroom challenges, it also works with those already in the field by providing valuable research data to improve teaching and learning, to structure inclusive and engaging curricula and to develop tools for assessment.
"We're continually looking for synergies ... and developing new knowledge that fulfills the university's research mission," says Edna Szymanski, dean of the College of Education. "The real challenge is finding the right balance between the expertise of the faculty and the needs of the community."
Stimulate Teachers' Creativity
The community needs well-trained teachers in all subject areas. Nariman Farvardin, dean of the Clark School of Engineering, would add "passion" to what is required of teachers, especially for those in the sciences.
"It's not good enough to tell people how exciting these fields are... We need to show them the role engineering plays in our everyday life," he says.
 This summer, in conjunction with the College of Education, the School of Engineering will launch a program, funded by the GE Foundation, designed to generate enthusiasm about careers in engineering and technology. Teachers Integrating Mathematics and Engineering (TIME) brings a variety of programs such as ongoing teacher education and a two-week summer program to middle and high school teachers and guidance counselors from Maryland, starting with Prince George's County.
"Our objective is to ultimately influence the mindset of mathematics and science teachers and guidance counselors about engineering and technology-related fields," says Farvardin, with the goal of inspiring young people to enter these fields.
Patricia Campbell, associate professor with the College of Education's Department of Curriculum and Instruction, echoes Farvardin's emphasis on teachers' importance. She believes that "you're not going to change what students learn unless you change what teachers are teaching." To prove this point, she and her research team set about helping math teachers in Baltimore City elementary schools revamp the entire mathematics curriculum. "It became a systemic project that worked with curriculum, instruction, professional development, assessment and policymakers."
 The six-year Mathematics Applications and Reasoning Skills (MARS) project empowered teachers whose students responded with increased achievement. Median scores on standardized tests jumped 16 to 23 percentile points after three years, even as about two-thirds of the elementary teachers attended the professional development sessions, says Campell. "We learned that a teacher affects a student's mathematics achievement for at least two years."
Campbell's team also began to understand more about how learning occurs, which can help teachers be more effective in planning engaging instruction.
John Guthrie
concurs. Director of the university-based Maryland Literacy Research Center, Guthrie and his colleagues explore how students construct meaning from text. Just knowing how to say a word isn't enough.
 "My research is on children's reading comprehension ... in grades 3 through 5," says Guthrie, who has won a Board of Regents Research Award for his work. "After word recognition, what's next?"
Using a $4.2 million grant
from the National Science Foundation, his team is working in several schools in Frederick County over the next five years, specifically on science comprehension. His team offers eight strategies that when applied have proven beneficial to reading comprehension, motivation and science knowledge.
One of his strategies, for example, encourages students to literally draw connections between pieces of information.
"It helps them to think constructively while they're reading," he says, adding that any of the strategies his team is showing teachers how to use can be practiced in other disciplines.
Foster a Nurturing Environment 
Melanie Killen, a professor with the college's Department of Human Development, looks at how school environments foster or inhibit children's perceptions of inclusion or exclusion, specifically around issues of race and ethnicity. How can a student be expected to be excited about, even interested in, learning when he or she is combating feelings of isolation? Teachers, she confirmed, play a pivotal role in the way schools foster tolerance and mutual respect.
"Just like with girls and science. A lot of times, good teachers are unaware of implicit biases, implied messages," she says.
With grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Child Health and Development, Killen's team interviewed 4th, 7th and 10th grade classrooms, of both heterogeneously and homogeneously populated schools, to discern how the social context of schools figures into student perceptions of inclusion and exclusion.
 Kids in homogeneous schools were less likely to talk about the negative consequences of exclusion than were kids in heterogeneous schools. "They are puzzled by all of this ... and they're falling back on stereotypes and don't even realize it," says Killen. "Kids in mixed environments, from both majority and minority backgrounds, found exclusion wrong and gave very elaborate answers why."
A large part of the inclusion equation is accessibility. Martin Johnson, director of the Maryland Institute for Minority Achievement and Urban Education, and Margaret McLaughlin, associate director of the university's Institute for the Study of Exceptional Children, spend their time helping educators make sure no child really is left behind.
"I believe that as many things as we don't like about the No Child Left Behind Act, it is forcing schools to look at subgroups of kids and be responsible for them," says McLaughlin. She is referring to President George Bush's 2001 legislation that requires greater accountability and calls on states to close the achievement gap.
 Working on a five-year Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs project, McLaughlin explores accountability as it relates to the programs and policies for children with disabilities.
She is examining eight districts in four states and finding that it works best when whole schools take responsibility for children with disabilities.
"At the district level it's much more difficult to find a strong statement of commitment, but you can find it in individual schools," says McLaughlin, who summarizes the features. They include a clear understanding that the top cares about what happens to kids with disabilities, a clear expectation that these kids can and will achieve, and a clear and clearly written curriculum, created by collaboration between teachers and parents. And as with education in general, "Teacher preparation and development is important," she says.
Johnson and his institute colleagues agree. In order to help kids achieve at a higher level, teachers must be better prepared. He talks of being "intensely concerned" about how teachers affect the performance of minority students, especially. But any efforts by the institute are a result of careful planning done with the schools. Jim Greenberg, director of the K-16 Partnership Development Center, makes it clear that each project has to do two things: meet the needs of the schools as identified by those in it and provide benefits for both the school and the university. Johnson and Greenberg point to the Bladensburg Project as an example of this kind of genuine collaboration.
Begun four years ago to address achievement gaps in a high-poverty, low-performing cluster of Prince George's County schools, the project includes Bladensburg High School, William Wirt Middle School and Rogers Heights and Templeton elementary schools. It is a model of purposeful, planned collaborations with Maryland faculty members from curriculum and instruction, mathematics, and counseling and personnel services.
"We can't do everything everyone wants, but we can do what feels right to everybody," says Greenberg. "We don't go to them and tell them what to do ... it's what we can do together."
Assess the Results
 Once synergistic relationships begin to affect change in student performance, it is time to put the results to the test. Educators across the country are trying to create accurate assessment tools, in part, to comply with President Bush's No Child requirements. Peter Afflerbach, with the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, focuses on the assessment of educational programs for the National Center for Education Statistics' National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) project. It is also known more pointedly as the Nation's Report Card. As part of the reading committee, he reviews test passages "to make sure they are high quality. The committee's particular task is to make sure the passages and items [that comprise the questions] are valid," he says. "Careful test development takes a number of years."
As evidence, Afflerbach is also on NAEP's 2009 framework committee, "working on revising ... what reading is and how it's done" in order to shape future curriculum and testing materials. He is especially interested in how students construct meaning from text.
Dean Szymanski says nationally important work such as Afflerbach's, as well as transformative local projects, reflect "the overall excellence of the school." Greenberg would add that it demonstrates what can happen when quality collaboration occurs.
TERP
|
Information provided by the Office of University Communications
