MU Experience: Inservice Group Meetings

Goals of the Project Activities

The teachers participated in a variety of project activities. These activities were designed to engage teachers in:
  1. Building on and extending real-world-based problem solving experiences to eventually enhance middle school students' algebraic-based and geometric-based thinking.

  2. Sharing, reflecting, and discussing with each other and with other mathematics educators their successes and their struggles in implementing authentic problem solving and mathematics education reform in their classrooms.

  3. Viewing and discussing video tapes developed by other projects (for example: Mathematical Inquiry Through Video: Tools for Professional Growth, an NSF funded project with Fadia Harik as project director), and reading, discussing, and linking selected readings (for example: from the Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School special issue on algebraic thinking, selected chapters from Schifter & Fosnot (1993) Reconstructing Mathematics Education) to the teachers' experiences in the project and their own classrooms.

Where & When Meetings Were Held

This inservice program was spread over 2 years (1997 and 1998) during the winter and spring months. During the school year, the inservice meetings were held in the Clinton Rosette Middle School building during evening hours. Additional day-long intensive sessions where held in the Mathematics Education Laboratory at Northern Illinois University after the school year had ended.

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