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The Poincare Institute: A Partnership for Mathematics Education
The Poincare Institute for Mathematics Education, led by Tufts University, in collaboration with TERC, with Dover, NH, School District as core partner, and partner districts in Massachusetts (Fitchburg, Leominster, Medford, Medway, and Somerville), New Hampshire (Dover, Sanborn, and Timberlane), and Maine (Portland), seeks to transform and improve the teaching and learning of mathematics in middle school and the connections between the elementary, middle, and high school curricula. The project's work will directly benefit 180 in-service and 24 new teachers and, each year, more than 2200 students.

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Project Contributions

Teacher Development and Seventh Graders’ Achievement on Representing and Solving Equations
"We analyze the impact of a teacher development program based on a functions approach to algebra on 7th graders understanding of equations and examine how students' score gains during the…
Teacher Development and the Achievement Gap
"Despite much investment aimed at closing the achievement gap between ethnic minorities and white students (see Kitchen & Berk, 2016), success stories are rare. Research (e.g., Balfanz & Byrnes, 2006;…
Teacher Development And Student Learning
"We describe and evaluate a teacher development program for in-service teachers in grades 5 to 9. The program focuses on functional relations and their multiple representations as a thread throughout…
Evaluating Mathematics Teachers' Professional Development Motivations and Needs
"While there is widespread agreement that one-size-fits-all professional development (PD) initiatives have limited potential to foster teacher learning, much existing PD is still designed without attention to teachers' motivations and…
Examining How Teachers Use Graphs to Teach Mathematics during a Professional Development Program
"There are urgent calls for more studies examining the impact of Professional Development (PD) programs on teachers' instructional practices. In this study, we analyzed how grades 5-9 mathematics teachers used…
The Poincare Institute, a partnership for Mathematics Education
This video gives a short overview of the goals, activities and results of the Poincare Institute. We built a program for middle school in service Mathematics teachers that develops mathematical…
What Our Teachers Have To Say About Poincaré Institute
A fifth grade teacher talks about how the Poincar Institute helped her change her style of teaching and better understand her students reasoning, and the content of mathematics.
Impact of Poincare Mathematics Project on Teacher Instruction
"This presentation begins with a brief overview of the Poincar Mathematics project, with a focus on how this on-line targeted MSP institute engages teachers in classroom applications of Algebra concepts…
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in a Teacher Development Program
"We describe the Poincar Institute's efforts to develop interdisciplinary graduate level courses, along with school-based support, for grades 5 to 9 teachers. In the courses, teachers examine the content of…
Mathematics Teachers Attending and Responding to Students' Thinking: Diverse Paths across Diverse Assignments
"Professional development (PD) programs often evaluate their impact on teachers' learning by assessing teachers either individually or in groups. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the variety of…
Mathematics Teachers' Ideas about Mathematical Models: A Diverse Landscape
"This paper describes the diversity of ideas middle school mathematics teachers have regarding 1) what constitutes a mathematical model of a real-world phenomenon, and 2) the relationships between models and…
Integrating Disciplinary Perspectives: The Poincare Institute for Mathematics Education
"We describe the development of the Poincar Institute, an NSFMSP supported program developed through Tufts University Departments of Mathematics, Education, and Physics and by TERC, in partnership with nine school…
Nurturing and Supporting Middle School Mathematics Teachers
Posted by: Barbara Brizuela . The Poincar Institute for Mathematics Education builds partnerships among faculty from Tufts Universitys departments of Mathematics, Education, and Physics, researchers from TERC, and school leaders and teachers from nine New…
The Poincare Institute: Nurturing Expertise in Mathematics Teaching and Learning
The Poincare Institute aims to promote student learning of Middle School mathematics by developing teachers' expertise regarding (1) key mathematical objects related to algebra and the mathematics of functions; (2)…