Measuring Math Motivation (M³)
Joined 2024
Partners
Kiddom
WestEd
Large urban district in the Southeast
What are we building?
Focus and Goals: The project focuses on improving the capacity of math teachers and enhancing middle school students' motivation, engagement, and persistence (MEP) in math, particularly through teacher professional development, Kiddom AI, and the Student Math Notebook. We aim to understand the role that various strands of professional development (pedagogy, content, and technology) have on teacher capacity. Through that process, we hope to improve teachers' capacity to deliver high-quality math instruction, thereby strengthening student MEP. We plan to develop and test new research infrastructure to lower the cost, time, and human effort required to collect data on student MEP and teacher capacity.
Professional Development will focus on math teacher identity, pedagogy, math content, and technology use.
Kiddom AI is a teacher-facing tool that will generate auto feedback, auto scoring of student work, and appropriate practice problems for students.
The Student Math Notebook is a Kiddom digital tool that aims to establish reflective habits and a safe space for qualitative feedback. It integrates with Kiddom's student-facing reporting dashboard, enabling students to view their cumulative performance results.
Challenge to Address: We hope to generate new and repeatable evidence on product features and enactment practices that foster MEP for priority students. From there, we will apply our findings to develop evidence-based and generalizable product guidelines that can then be scaled. The current instructional materials market does not reward products that are designed to foster MEP. We hope to provide developers and buyers clear direction and guidance on what to look for within products.
What are we learning?
The impact of varied Professional Learning models, Kiddom AI, and a digital Student Math Notebook on teacher and student-level outcomes including student MEP.
How design, development, and use of instructional materials can drive improvement in student outcomes
The respective contributions of student MEP and teacher capacity toward math success
Products
Professional Learning sessions and materials
Kiddom AI: auto feedback, auto scoring of student work, and appropriate practice problems for students
Student Math Notebook
Research infrastructure for collecting data on student MEP and teacher capacity