Design Research with Educational Systems: Investigating and Supporting Improvements in the Quality of Mathematics Teaching and Learning at Scale

Item

Title

Design Research with Educational Systems: Investigating and Supporting Improvements in the Quality of Mathematics Teaching and Learning at Scale

Abstract/Description

This chapter describes a partnership with four urban districts that aimed to develop an empirically grounded theory of action for improving the quality of mathematics instruction at scale. Each year, we conducted a data collection, analysis, and feedback cycle in each district that involved documenting the district's improvement strategies, collecting and analyzing data to assess how these strategies were being implemented, reporting the findings to the district, and making recommendations about how the strategies might be revised. We distinguish between two distinct levels of analysis: providing the districts with timely evidence of how their strategies were playing out in schools, and testing and elaborating the conjectures that comprise our theory of action for instructional improvement. We clarify the crucial role that two research tools played at each level of analysis: our emerging theory of action and an interpretive framework that we used to assess the potential of each district's strategies to contribute to instructional improvement. We also illustrate that our collaboration with the four districts instantiates the basic tenets of design-based implementation research and involved conducting systematic inquiry to develop theory related to improving the quality of classroom instruction and student learning at the system level.

Author/creator

Cobb, Paul

Jackson, Kara

Smith, Thomas M.

Sorum, Michael

Henrick, Erin C.

Date

2013

In publication

Teachers College Record

Volume

115

Issue

14

Pages

320-349

Resource type

en Research/Scholarly Media

Resource status/form

en Published Text

Scholarship genre

en Empirical

Language

en

Open access/full-text available

en Yes

Peer reviewed

en Yes

ISSN

0161-4681

DOI

10.1177/016146811311501408

URL

Official Publisher's Webpage (SAGE Journals)

Full-text PDF (University of Washington)

Citation

Cobb, P., Jackson, K., Smith, T., Sorum, M., & Henrick, E. (2013). Design Research with Educational Systems: Investigating and Supporting Improvements in the Quality of Mathematics Teaching and Learning at Scale. Teachers College Record, 115(14), 320–349. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811311501408

Cited in

The Work of Improvement

Cross-National Research on Continuous Improvement

Abbreviation

Teachers College Record

Item sets

Open Access Resource (IRE)

Handbook Chapter 2 Citations

OB Citations - Cross National Research on Continuous Improvement

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