Research-Practitioner Collaboration Meeting

Furthering Girls’ Math Identity is an NSF-funded capacity-building project (HRD-1348524), led by FHI 360 and the New York Academy of Sciences, to advance research and practice related to middle-school girls’ math identity. The ultimate goal of the project is to broaden girls’ participation in STEM education and careers through the development of a Networked Improvement Community (NIC), an intentionally formed network of educational professionals and practitioners working with researchers to address a practical problem of high importance.1
 
Furthering Girls’ Math Identity hosted a working meeting in New York City on January 25, 2017. The goal of the meeting was to facilitate collaboration between researchers and practitioners (e.g., classroom teachers, informal educators, and staff development professionals) on improvement projects designed to foster a strong math identity in middle-school girls.
 
The meeting built on the work of a June 2015 convening during which researchers and practitioners identified key "drivers" of girls' math identity as well as related practices and needed systemic changes. Some of these drivers included:
  • Infusing a growth mindset into professional development and teaching practice
  • Using engaging instructional methods designed for girls
  • Creating positive expectations about girls and math
  • Helping girls understand how they can use math in their own lives
Mini-grants were then awarded to aid promising projects in planning and implementation. Project summaries can be viewed here.
 
An evaluation report can be viewed here.

Questions? Please contact us here. 

[1] Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better.
[2] Plan-do-study-act inquiry cycles are a method for iterative testing of changes to a process or intervention. The cycle includes the following steps: 1) Plan- Define the change. Make predictions about what will happen as a result. Design a way to test the change. 2) Do- Carry out the change. Collect data on the results. 3) Study- analyze the data. Compare results to predictions. Determine what was learned to inform the next cycle. 4) Act- Decide what to do next: adapt, abandon, or adopt the process/intervention.