The future of math: Inside Illinois' new statewide numeracy plan (with Phi Nguyen and Erica Mason)

Illinois has launched a new statewide numeracy plan aimed at strengthening math education for students across the state. In this episode, researchers Phi Nguyen (UIC) and Erica Mason (Illinois) discuss the reasoning behind the plan, their role in its development, and how it could improve outcomes for students across Illinois.

Read the full report: https://bit.ly/3T0oWvB

Transcript

Kristen Chandler

Hello everyone, and welcome to Illinois Policy Unpacked podcast, where we inform the policy conversation in Illinois and beyond.

Today, we’re joined by Phi Nguyen, an assistant professor of math and learning science at the University of Illinois Chicago. Phi’s research focuses on policymaking and leadership for mathematics education and developing coherent mathematics teacher education programs.

We’re also joined by Erica Mason, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Erica’s research investigates teachers’ beliefs as they support disabled students in accessing the general education mathematics curriculum.

In this episode, we discuss their latest publication with the Institute of Government and Public Affairs, which explores Illinois’ new numeracy plan and the role they played in shaping its development. Phi and Erica, thank you for joining us.

Erica Mason

Well, thanks for having us. 

Kristen Chandler

Thank you. You both played a key role in developing the Illinois State Board of Education's new numeracy plan. How did you become involved in the effort, and what problems was the plan designed to address?

Phi Nguyen

Yeah, so one of the first steps in developing the numeracy plan was the numeracy summit that the Illinois State Board of Education convened last year in June. We were both invited to that summit, and that was really a gathering of different stakeholders from across the state, and the goal was to begin shaping a shared vision for what improving math education in Illinois might look like. What really motivated the development of the numeracy plan were general concerns around math student learning outcomes in both state and national assessments, like the nation's report card. 

We know from the research that one of the biggest levers to student learning is really high-quality math instruction, so a lot of the work of the drafting team, which I was a member of, was really to curate or draft an instructional vision that promotes students' opportunities for sense making, problem solving, and mathematical discourse. And then the plan would provide educators with resources and guidance in taking up new instructional practices aligned with that vision.

Kristen Chandler  

Okay, great, thanks for sharing that. I know not everyone's familiar with kind of that lawmaking process, but it's really great when lawmakers do tap into experts who are subject matter experts, and it really helps strengthen policy, and that's what IGPA is all about. So, thank you for your involvement in that, in that research.

Phi Nguyen

Yeah, we were both really excited to be a part of that policy making process.

Kristen Chandler  

Yeah, that's wonderful. Um, the both of your report notes that early math skills are one of the strongest predictors of future academic success, which was interesting to me. As I read it, I wasn't quite sure, um, you know, whether or not it would be English or math, but why is building a strong math foundation so important? And what happens when students fall behind?

Erica Mason

Yeah, we think it's important that, so perhaps when people think about math teaching and learning, they think a lot about developing certain math skills or engaging with particular math content, which we agree is important. But we also think there's a real need to nurture students as mathematical thinking, specifically opportunities for students to develop a robust math identity, so that means that students develop a sense of, like, oh, I can do math, I belong in math, math matters to me in my life. And so if one of the goals of math learning, broadly conceived, is that we're trying to support students in using these kinds of mathematical understandings to both make sense of and to shape the world, then early math learning opportunities are really crucial to support students and seeing math as like connected and sensical, so that then they have, I think, a drive to explore math as they keep going through throughout K-12 schooling experiences.

Kristen Chandler  

Absolutely, I know you know, just speaking from my own experience being in math, you know, you think of with algebra, where they're adding like letters and things like that into it, whereas it's different from your everyday 5+5 that you use in daily life. You think, “how is this math going to be in helping me later in life?” But really, you're talking about it's the way that we approach math and how it encourages a different way of thinking is very important. 

Erica Mason

Yeah, and I think that making sure that students, as soon as they enter the school system, have the chance to sort of engage with mathematics like that. Because most of us would think back to our own schooling experiences, and perhaps that was mostly emphasizing things like just completing math problems or computing, which is important, and that is a necessary skill for students, but also sort of broadening how we conceptualize what it means to do math. And so we think that the earlier students get the opportunity to, yeah, develop a sort of mathematical thinking that that really enriches the rest of their schooling experiences, so it's not just sort of a series of completing tasks, but it becomes more engaging and meaningful.

Kristen Chandler  

Yeah, absolutely, and I can imagine that that principle can be applied across many different types of topics in school, as well. So, thank you for sharing that. One of your recommendations is to establish minimum instructional time for mathematics, which you mentioned in the report is different, where they do have minimum instructional time requirements for English, if students are falling behind. But it's different for mathematics right now. Why doesn't Illinois currently have similar requirements for math as it does for reading? And what difference could dedicated math instructional time make?

Phi Nguyen

Yeah, so as you were mentioning, Kristen, that right now Illinois legislation requires that students in grades K to three, whose reading level is currently below their grade level, that those students must receive at least 60 minutes of daily reading instruction. No similar legislation exists for math, even though math student learning outcomes are lower than that of literacy. 

For us, I think this reflects this continued prioritization of literacy over math. Of course, reading is important, but we also think mathematical literacy is important, especially with all that data and communications around mathematics. Even we've heard from the Illinois teachers and educators that we work with that many of their school schedules allow for less than 60 minutes of math instruction per day, so, for us, legislation that would mandate a minimum number of instructional minutes per format would ensure that all students, regardless of the school that they attend, have sufficient learning opportunities in mathematics. So this additional time could be used for teachers to really give students opportunities in line with what Erica was sharing. So, opportunities for students to make sense of mathematics, to problem solve, to engage in math talk and mathematical discourse, so that they do find math meaningful and that they do develop identities that they can use mathematics in their everyday lives. This is really important because the quality of instruction is as important as the quantity of instruction.

Kristen Chandler  

Yeah, absolutely. I think most people, you know, if they're not confident in something, they're not going to view themselves, identify themselves in it. So, you know, if you're not good at math, you're going to think of yourself that way and not really engage as strongly. And so it's really great that this type of thing would encourage students to have more confidence in math and see themselves in it more, and maybe think about math in different ways. That's great. 

Your report encourages schools to move beyond traditional direct instruction and move towards inquiry-based math learning. What does that look like in the classroom, and what does the research suggest leads to better outcomes for students?

Erica Mason

Well, building off of what Phi was just saying, we think we're excited to think about what instruction that emphasizes student thinking really looks like, and so, for us, that high-quality instruction is really, again, the kind of instructional or learning environment that emphasizes student thinking, where students are doing most of the talking. Again, maybe that's different from how most of us went to school and experienced mathematics classrooms, but it's this idea that student thinking is really the thing that's driving instruction in that classroom. So, students are doing most of the talking, they're talking a lot to each other, and they're working together, peer-to-peer, to make sense of mathematics. Students are still learning procedures, but they're moving beyond that, and we're encouraged to think about students developing understanding about why procedures make sense or why particular things in mathematics work, and so instead of learning that by hearing from a teacher and a teacher's way of making sense of that. 

We're envisioning the kind of instruction where students are working together to problem solve and come to those understandings in a perhaps more organic way. Teachers are there, teachers are providing guidance and expertise, but instead of the teacher sort of telling students or informing students, students are really informing teachers, and so then not only is student thinking driving instruction, but it also really helps teachers figure out, “okay, well, where do we go next?” or “what pathways does this instruction take tomorrow?” 

Overall, as we've been emphasizing, this sort of inquiry-oriented approach to math learning is really intended to help students develop this sort of well-rounded set of mathematical skills and concepts. So, it's again not just students developing proficiency and being able to compute, but being able to again reason and make sense of the mathematics, so that again it matters and is again hopefully generalizable to skills beyond just completing the specific task at hand.

Kristen Chandler  

Absolutely, so are students then working in groups together and talking about this, as well as you know, working with a teacher? Because I'm just thinking back to, you know, Bloom's taxonomy. If you're able to apply and teach it back to someone, you've really grasped the topic, so that sounds like a really effective way for students to be learning mathematics.

Erica Mason

Yeah, I mean, that mathematical discourse can happen both at the whole class level, so it could be that the teacher's facilitating a really rich discussion, but instead of it being more lecture style, so to speak, it's more like the teacher poses a really meaningful or rich question, and then students sort of again fill in or answer that question with each other. But certainly what you're saying, Kristen, that students are talking to each other in small groups, which is, I think, a real shift into how we think about where mathematical learning sort of comes from.

Kristen Chandler  

Yeah, absolutely. You know what you alluded to earlier, a lot of, a lot of the times, at least when I was going to school, it was the teachers talking at you, or as opposed to that type of group learning and teaching and reporting back. So that's really great. Another major focus of your report is supporting teachers. Why is teacher preparation and ongoing coaching so important? And how could investing in mathematics instructional coaches improve both teaching and student achievement?

Phi Nguyen

Yeah, so kind of overall we know that there's a lot of research on the positive relationship between teacher knowledge, their instruction, and student learning. So, because a lot of the numeracy plans recommendations is to shift what good math instruction looks like, teachers will likely need support in learning and taking up new instructional practices. Since a lot of what is currently happening in Illinois classrooms is not necessarily always aligned with what the numeracy plan is recommending. 

So at the pre-service teacher level, our suggestion was to increase the number of courses that they take in math education, so that pre-service teachers have sufficient opportunities to learn about how children think about math, and then what instructional practices can we use to support that math thinking, so that they are ready to go into the classrooms and provide high-quality math instruction at the in-service level with current teachers. We recommend instructional coaching, so that teachers are provided with job-embedded support, so kind of by contrast to that one-time pull-out professional development that so many teachers are used to. Instructional coaching could be sustained and provide teachers over time with sustained opportunities to learn, practice, enact, and then reflect upon new instructional strategies. 

One of the great things about Illinois is that there's already existing statewide infrastructure that could train math coaches through the elementary math specialists endorsement, and that endorsement, the EMS endorsement, prepares professionals to be math leaders in their schools. Right now, there's already three institutions that have programs aligned with the EMS endorsement. Illinois can leverage this pipeline by allocating funds to train and hire individuals to be math coaches at schools. There's already a couple states that are taking similar approaches, so for example, Missouri, they provided funding that would cover tuition costs for almost 800 teachers to do the training in elementary math specialists. And then Alabama, in their new numeracy act, provided state funding, so that every public K-5 school would have at least one coach, so we are hoping Illinois does similar investments.

Kristen Chandler  

Yeah, absolutely. You know that sounds great to have somebody who is who goes through that extra training and is really prepared to help other teachers and students. That's wonderful. What do you hope policy makers and educators and families take away from this report?

Erica Mason

Yeah, so we had mentioned earlier that this is a really exciting step for Illinois, in the sense that the Illinois State Board of Education has put together this plan, this sort of statewide guidance. Document. But currently it's only a document, and so we're encouraging policymakers to take this document and really use it to inform meaningful legislation that supports the actual enactment of the recommendations in the plan. So I think the worst-case scenario would be that it just is a nice plan that kind of lives out there, but that nothing ever happens with it, so to speak. 

And so, our encouragement through this brief that we wrote was to think about small, medium, and large changes that might come about because of the recommendations in the plan, and so our encouragement to policymakers is to think about where we can prioritize math learning, so that we can make sure that students in Illinois have the same opportunities to learn and excel in mathematics, just as they have been given the same opportunities in English language arts. 

For educators, we think a lot about reflecting on aspects of their own practice that might already be reflected in the plan, so if the plan comes across their desk or there are initiatives happening in their districts, we're hopeful that teachers and other educators sort of say, "Oh, we're already doing things that are on the pathway to enacting this,” and how can we continue that work? We also hope the plan serves as like a springboard for conversations amongst educators and educators and researchers, so that folks might all work together in a cohesive manner to bring about again this vision of high-quality math instruction in Illinois.

Kristen Chandler  

Absolutely, thank you for highlighting that, and, and I think we can say that about a lot of you know these type of plans that we have for education, you know, they have, they have really good meaning and intentions, and we really just want to see them carried out for all the schools in Illinois.

Erica Mason

Yeah.

Kristen Chandler  

Finally, where can listeners go to learn more about your work?

Phi Nguyen

Yeah, so first we encourage you to read the entire Policy Brief or Spotlight, you can find that on the IGPA website. To learn more about our individual research, you can find us at our faculty files at our respective institutions. I'm at the University of Illinois Chicago, and Erica is at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Kristen Chandler  

Thank you to Phi Ngyuen and Erica Mason for joining us today and highlighting how investing in teachers, evidence-based instruction, and early learning can help improve student outcomes. To learn more about the Illinois Numeracy Plan and the research discussed today, visit the links in our show notes. Until next time, thanks for listening.