Researching and Using Progressions (Trajectories) in Mathematics Education

Book excerpt: The relationship between research and practice has long been an area of interest for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners alike. One obvious arena where mathematics education research can contribute to practice is the design and implementation of school mathematics curricula. This observation holds whether we are talking about curriculum as a set of broad, measurable competencies (i.e., standards) or as a comprehensive set of resources for teaching and learning mathematics. Impacting practice in this way requires fine-grained research that is focused on individual student learning trajectories and intimate analyses of classroom pedagogical practices as well as large-scale research that explores how student populations typically engage with the big ideas of mathematics over time. Both types of research provide an empirical basis for identifying what aspects of mathematics are important and how they develop over time. This book has its origins in independent but parallel work in Australia and the United States over the last 10 to 15 years. It was prompted by a research seminar at the 2017 PME Conference in Singapore that brought the contributors to this volume together to consider the development and use of evidence-based learning progressions/trajectories in mathematics education, their basis in theory, their focus and scale, and the methods used to identify and validate them. In this volume they elaborate on their work to consider what is meant by learning progressions/trajectories and explore a range of issues associated with their development, implementation, evaluation, and on-going review. Implications for curriculum design and future research in this field are also considered. Contributors are: Michael Askew, Tasos Barkatsas, Michael Belcher, Rosemary Callingham, Doug Clements, Jere Confrey, Lorraine Day, Margaret Hennessey, Marj Horne, Alan Maloney, William McGowan, Greg Oates, Claudia Orellana, Julie Sarama, Rebecca Seah, Meetal Shah, Dianne Siemon, Max Stephens, Ron Tzur, and Jane Watson.