NACCTEP and AMATYC Begin Joint Venture

By Darlene Winnington, Delaware Technical Community College, and Susan Wood, Virginia Community College System

For the first time in history, eighty organizations from across the country ranging from early childhood educators to higher education representatives assembled as teams at the National Math Panel Forum in Washington, D.C., on October 6 and 7, 2008. This effort was sponsored by the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) and the U.S. Department of Education, and funded by the National Science Foundation and the ExxonMobil Foundation.

The purpose of the National Math Panel Forum was to put the 45 recommendations of the final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, Foundations for Success, into action. The recommendations are grouped in seven sub-categories: Curriculum Content, Learning Processes, Teachers and Teacher Education,Instructional Practices,
Instructional Materials, Assessment, and Research Policies and Mechanisms The complete report can be viewed here.

With reports from states that as many as 50 percent of prospective teachers begin their preparation at community colleges, a collaborative effort between NACCTEP and the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC) was created, which resulted in a team from both organizations participating in the National Math Panel Forum. The team members were Virginia Carson, NACCTEP President; Susan Wood, Past President of both NACCTEP and AMATYC; Rob Farinelli, AMATYC President-Elect, and Darlene Winnington, Chair of AMATYC’s Teacher Preparation Committee. The team focused on recommendation #16, developing teacher effectiveness through teacher preparation programs, and #19, mathematics preparation of pre-service teachers, career support, professional development, and on-going research.

The team designed a plan of implementation, which includes the dissemination of information about the report and the continued research and findings in the areas of teacher preparation through newsletters, presentations, and committee meetings. Both organizations will add links to their respective websites to the report and to the Doing What Works website. Both organizations will promote identified promising practices about effective K-12 teachers in pre-service teachers’ mathematics preparation. NACCTEP and AMATYC will also consider informational workshops and/or themed sessions that address the findings of the report.

Long range plans include having the NACCTEP and AMATYC Executive Boards consider future strategies to implement these findings within the organizations. The joint team hopes to consider preparing policy/position statements with regard to content knowledge of pre-service teachers and the requisite preparation of those who teach pre-service teachers.