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Building Capacity in Grade 9 Mathematics: Case Studies from a Collaborative Inquiry Project in Applied Level Mathematics

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Teaching and Learning Secondary School Mathematics

Part of the book series: Advances in Mathematics Education ((AME))

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Abstract

In this chapter, we report on the results of a 4-year professional development projects focusing on improving teaching and learning for grade 9 students in Ontario. The participants were administrators, department heads and teachers from four secondary schools out of ten involved in a mathematics professional development project. At each school, an implementation team was responsible for identifying the mathematics strands to be investigated, share resources, discuss and implement teaching practices, collaborate on assessment (particularly moderated marking), and co-teaching/peer coaching. The university research team visited the participating schools to support their Mathematics Implementation Team twice per year. We describe four case studies to illustrate the various ways in which these participants improved the provincial large-scale mathematics assessment test scores from 80 to 256%. This study shows that professional development is more effective when administrators, department heads and teachers participate cohesively with university partners to improve mathematics learning in schools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. OISE, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Douglas McDougall & Sue Ferguson

Authors
  1. Douglas McDougall
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  2. Sue Ferguson
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Correspondence to Douglas McDougall .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

    Ann Kajander

  2. Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Jennifer Holm

  3. College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

    Egan J Chernoff

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McDougall, D., Ferguson, S. (2018). Building Capacity in Grade 9 Mathematics: Case Studies from a Collaborative Inquiry Project in Applied Level Mathematics. In: Kajander, A., Holm, J., Chernoff, E. (eds) Teaching and Learning Secondary School Mathematics. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92390-1_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92390-1_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92389-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92390-1

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