Mathematics News

Dr. Nick Fortune’s (Associate Professor of Mathematics), Dr. Chris Rasmussen’s (San Diego State University), and Dr. Debra Carney’s (Colorado School of Mines) National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) grant, “Making Upper Division Mathematics Courses More Relevant for Future High School Teachers: The Case of Inquiry-Oriented Dynamical Systems and Modeling,” was recently funded.

Recent mathematics education work has begun to reimagine how upper division mathematics courses can better serve prospective secondary mathematics teachers. The purpose of the project is to contribute to this line of inquiry by creating and investigating the impact of a new upper division elective, Inquiry-Oriented Dynamical Systems and Modeling (IODSM), specifically designed for prospective secondary mathematics teachers. The project has the following three overall goals:

(1) Curriculum: Create an open-source, semester-long IODSM curriculum, where modeling applications include a variety of environmental, ecological, sustainability, and social issues of interest to students. The curriculum will include classroom student tasks, instructor teaching resources and strategies, suggested tools and related material, and recommended norms for discourse.

(2) Research: Investigate the impact of this newly developed curriculum on prospective secondary teachers’ knowledge of content intimately connected to high school mathematics, the ways in which they engage in the eight Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice, their beliefs about learning and teaching mathematics, and contributions to their emerging professional practices. Making use of a design-based research approach, the project will address the success and impact of the intervention.

(3) Outreach: To build human capacity among the potential community of users by conducting workshops at Mathematical Association of America MathFest and starting a new Working Group at the Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education on designing and modifying upper-division mathematics courses for prospective secondary teachers.

The grant will go from June 2024 to May 2027. Two WKU undergraduate research assistants will work on the project. Dr. Rasmussen will serve as PI and Drs. Carney and Fortune will serve as co-PIs. The project was funded at $118,125 for the WKU sub-award, with a total project award of $748,901.