PROJECT SUMMARY

Planning for Professional Development in Pre-School Mathematics: Meeting the Challenge of Standards 2000

There is increasing attention to preschool mathematics education. Consider the following.

• 1. Increasing numbers of children attend early care and education programs.
• 2. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and numerous states are creating new standards for mathematics education for young children.
• 3. Several states are instituting universal preschool education.
• 4. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently funded several preschool mathematics curriculum projects.

What does not exist, however, and is sorely needed, is a plan for the professional development of the teachers and caregivers of these young children. Such a plan must consider that teachers and caregivers have diverse backgrounds and work situations. We have been funded by the National Science Foundation to develop a plan to reach and work with this diverse population. This plan will be

• (a) developed for a wide variety of administrators, teachers and caregivers
• (b) according to sophisticated models of empirical data (collected in this project via meetings and surveys) and staff development
• (c) by experienced people in full cooperation with the teachers, caregivers, and administrators and
• (d) distributed widely (as well as available on this Web site).

We believe that this projects has a strong potential for achieving widespread impact on inservice and preservice education of adults responsible for young children's learning of mathematics.

We have conducted a series of meetings with teachers, administrators, policy makers, and representatives of national organizations such as NAEYC and NCTM. We are examining several existing models (such as state and regional models, including Kansas City, Grand Rapids, MI, San Francisco, Ithaca, NY, and others) and are reviewing research on these and other models. We have identified key issues and continue to hold meetings. In addition, we have constructed a survey to collect information from a broad population-if you would be so kind as to fill out this survey yourself, please select that option and complete the survey on line. We will post the results of our research review, survey, and plan here as we complete them.