Enhancing Math Fluency

Playing scales. Learning conjugations. Memorizing multiplication tables. There is a great deal of rote learning that must occur before a person learns a skill. All too often, however, math students never progress further, never gaining what Nancy Iverson, an assistant dean in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS), calls mathematical fluency, the ability to use mathematics accurately, efficiently, and flexibly. “Middle school mathematics is especially important,” Iverson points out, “because it lays the foundation of fluency required to succeed in algebra and geometry.”

Late last year, the Virginia Department of Education awarded a U.Va.-led group of colleges and universities a $539,000 grant to increase the number of highly qualified middle school mathematics teachers in the state. The grant builds on a smaller initiative led by Virginia Commonwealth University that developed a series of four specialized courses for middle school teachers. The project’s organizers are collaborating with the Virginia Mathematics and Science Coalition, a public advocacy group that includes math and science professionals as well as leaders from business and government.  The courses are being offered at ten locations to teachers at more than one-third of the state’s 132 school divisions.

Iverson and mathematics professor Loren Pitt are the grant’s principal investigators. The courses are designed to improve teachers’ skills, linking topics from the state’s Standards of Learning with methods recommended by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “We are trying to change teachers’ practice and expectations,” Iverson comments. “It is only when they believe that their students can develop a fundamental understanding of mathematics that they will abandon their emphasis on simply teaching rules.”

As a public institution, the University has long felt a responsibility to improve the quality of math education in the Commonwealth’s schools, and in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, it has the ideal vehicle to reach beyond Charlottesville-area school divisions. SCPS has sites across the state and close relationships with other institutions of higher education in Virginia. The University’s mathematics department is strongly committed to this effort. A former chair of the department, Pitt directed the mathematics program for K-12 teachers at the University’s Center for Liberal Arts, served as executive director of the Virginia Mathematics and Science Coalition, and recently was honored by the Virginia Council for Mathematics Supervision for his leadership in mathematics education.

The Department of Mathematics also is involved in a number of other projects supporting elementary and secondary math education in Virginia. In 2004, it created a master’s degree program for high school teachers in Abingdon, the first master of arts program offered off Grounds by the University. “The local enthusiasm for this program is inspiring,” Pitt says. “Forty-seven teachers came out in the snow to attend an exploratory meeting.” Thirty-one teachers are now on track to receive their master’s degrees in 2007. Pitt, who also is the Gray Professor of Mathematics Education in the Curry School, has collaborated with faculty there to develop a master’s degree program to support the nation’s first state credential for math specialists in the elementary schools.  “In the last few years, we have accomplished a great deal,” Pitt says.  “This has a lot to do with the cooperative relationships we have built among Virginia’s universities and colleges to foster math education as well as the trust we have established with school divisions throughout the state.”