Tests of Change in the Continuous Improvement of Professional Development for Community College Developmental Mathematics

• In Event: Problem-Disciplined Practice-Based Inquiry for Improving Mathematics Teaching and Learning: Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycles as Tools for Improvement

Abstract

The success rate of developmental mathematics students at community colleges is alarmingly low. Eighty percent of these students do not successfully complete college-level mathematics courses within three years (Bailey, Jeong & Cho, 2010), resulting in millions of students who are unable to progress toward their life and career goals. To address this dramatic failure of our educational system, in 2009 the Carnegie Foundation launched the Community College Pathways, a network of over 50 colleges nationwide aimed at improving the learning experiences of developmental mathematics students and increasing their college-level mathematics completion rates.

For many faculty, Pathways teaching is a radical and challenging change. In contrast to traditional community college mathematics instruction, Pathways pedagogy is grounded in research on teaching for powerful mathematical understanding foregrounding productive struggle with substantive mathematical tasks, opportunities for rich discourse, making conceptual connections explicit, and the role of collaborative learning in promoting mathematical sense-making (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Hiebert & Grouws, 2007). In addition, the Pathways integrate interventions from social psychology designed to promote students’ engagement and persistence into mathematics instruction (Dweck, Walton & Cohen, 2014; Silver & White, 2013). To prepare and support new Pathways faculty, a professional development program was developed, the Faculty Support Program (FSP), based upon research on effective professional development (Hunsicker, 2010; Guskey, 2002; Garet, et al, 2001; LeMahieu, Roy & Foss, 1995). The design was also guided by principles of improvement science (Bryk et al, 2015), enabling the development of an infrastructure for responsive and flexible professional development that is continuously improving - i.e., is continuously sensitive to varying and changing conditions, with mechanisms for identifying, designing and testing ideas for improvement, as well as for capturing and sharing learning across the network. This paper reports on these processes of continuous improvement, highlighting (1) the role of measurement and (2) the use of iterative tests of change. The analysis draws upon data collected through the improvement processes as well as interviews with key stakeholders and document analysis of materials generated.

A central tool in the continuous improvement of the FSP is a measurement system consisting of system-level measures organized around five quality dimensions (effective, efficient, responsive, community-oriented, and faculty-centered and faculty-owned). These system-level measures, modeled after metrics of the quality of health care (Martin et al, 2007), serve as indicators of the program’s quality and were regularly reviewed by the FSP team. During these program reviews the team employed the Model for Improvement (Langley et al, 2009) to identify areas for improvement, develop a plan for measuring improvements between program reviews, and brainstorm changes that it theorized would lead to improvement. These change ideas were tested and iterated upon between program reviews (called “Action Periods”) using Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles (Langley et al, 2009). This paper presents analyses of action periods in the first year of the program, following change ideas as they were tested and evolved upon iterations in PDSA cycles. It will also share findings about how the team learned to manage the continuous improvement process, particularly sharing learning across the network.

 

Authors

• Carlos Sandoval, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Ann R. Edwards, Carnegie Foundation

• Haley McNamara, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching