Newswise — The Institute of Education Sciences, a research branch of the U.S. Department of Education, has awarded a $10 million grant to University of Delaware Professor Nancy C. Jordan and her two colleagues at Vanderbilt University and Carnegie Mellon University to fund a five-year research and development center aimed at understanding difficulties students have in math.
The Center on Improving Mathematics Instruction for Students with Mathematics Difficulties, administered at UD, will focus on improving math instruction for middle schoolers who have problems with math concepts, specifically fractions. "Research is showing that students have a lot of problems understanding rational numbers," said Jordan. "Fractions are very important for learning algebra, which is considered a gateway skill for success in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines." Research shows that students in the U.S. lag behind their peers in East Asia and much of Europe in terms of their math skills.
* On the 2004 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 50 percent of eighth graders in the U.S. could not order three fractions from least to greatest.
* U.S. students' understanding of fractions is even weaker, relative to that of students in other countries, than their understanding of whole numbers.
* Also, a large gap separates the mathematical knowledge of children from rich and poor backgrounds and from differing racial and ethnic groups. These differences are already present in preschool and increase over the course of schooling.
Jordan, along with colleagues Lynn Fuchs, a professor of special education at Vanderbilt University, and Robert Siegler, a professor of cognitive psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, will collaborate with local school districts surrounding the universities to conduct translational research and collect data. They will then use the findings to create intervention plans that can be implemented in the classroom to help students who are struggling with fractions. The research project is set to begin Sept. 1, 2010.
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