OU researchers to look at rural schools’ math education

by Ashley McKnight
For The Post

Ohio University officials plan to use their share of a grant awarded to an Appalachian education improvement center to continue research to raise the standards of teaching science and mathematics in rural schools.

OU received $2.2 million this fall as part of an initiative by the National Science Foundation to improve leadership and teaching in mathematics, science and technology.

Congress appropriated $100 million to the NSF, which is allocating $10 million each to five learning centers during a five-year period. The Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics, one of the five centers, is a partnership between the universities of Tennessee, Kentucky and Louisville, Marshall University, OU and the Appalachian Rural Systematic Initiative, a group that meets with educators to advance professional development.

OU is the research branch of the ACCLAIM project, responsible for investigating math and science education in rural areas. Directed by OU’s Morton Chairman of mathematics education Jim Schultz and rural education scholar Craig Howley, the Research Initiative oversees landscape studies, comparison studies and teaching strategies to help determine a plan of action for rural education.

This is the first major effort made to study rural education in mathematics, Schultz said.

The project workers hope to incorporate teachers in their research by soliciting descriptions of what it is like to teach math in Appalachia. Howley, along with a math education partner, will spend weeks observing and interviewing rural educators, Schultz said.

Howley said he plans to start a workshop where rural and mathematics researchers meet to discuss issues and collaborate on a study.

The researchers said they also will organize a Web site with resources for educators and researchers to make them aware of information available and where to find it.

The Web-based information might help develop ideas useful to other countries, Schultz said.

“This could be a forerunner of what can happen in the future,” Schultz said.

The program is geared toward Southeast Ohio and Kentucky and will target math education in specific schools in those areas, Schultz said.