Schools in several European countries largely fail to meet both excellence and equity: an alarmingly high percentage of European students (more than 20%) does not reach a minimum level of basic skills in mathematics; only 2%-3% of them reach the highest level of proficiency; and large variations in achievement exist between students within schools, indicating that schools fail to create equitable learning environments for their students (OECD, 2016). Responding to this situation, several European countries have revamped their curricula, aiming to ensure that students engage in rich and cognitively demanding mathematics. However, as curricula are not self-enacted, simply affording teachers such curricula cannot ensure that teachers create the desired learning environments—let alone that they do so for diverse students in nowadays mixed-ability classrooms. As the European Commission underscores (EC/EACEA/Eurydice, 2011), to effectively undertake this work, teachers need not only appropriate curricula, but also support and solid guidance to implement them to reach their full potential. Responding to this dual need, the main goal of the EDUCATE project is to develop, implement, validate, and refine materials for teachers and teacher educators that concurrently attend to both issues of excellence and equity, while also taking teachers’ actual needs into consideration. Even more crucially, the project aims to educate teachers use these materials by engaging them in guided reflection around their practice. EDUCATE aspires to help teachers promote excellence by helping them address issues on cognitive activation, since prior research has shown that engaging students in challenging tasks is pivotal for advancing their problem solving and reasoning skills--both considered key competencies for lifelong learning. It seeks to help teachers promote equity, by helping them structure learning environments that take into account diverse student needs and readiness levels. Thus, the project is novel in several ways: developing materials that address issues of cognitive activation and differentiation in an integrated manner, which was missing from past works attending to either excellence or equity; producing materials that are grounded in teachers’ actual practice and needs and which provide solid guidance for implementation; and educating teachers and teacher educators on how to use them. Working in four EU countries (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal) to minimize context dependencies and ensure the transferability of the materials produced, the project unfolds in four phases. In the first, European/national policy documents on excellence and equity, as well as prior studies on teachers’ needs and challenges when having to teach for both targets are reviewed. This top-down approach is complemented by a bottom-up approach involving lesson observations of 6-8 pre-service and in-service primary and secondary teachers (within each country) and post-lesson interviews with them to identify their actual and perceived needs and challenges when having to engage all their students in cognitively demanding tasks. In the second phase, building on this needs-assessment analysis, we develop packages for teachers and teacher educators, which aim to help them effectively deal with the most crucial challenges identified. After being content-validated and pilot-tested, these materials are implemented with 80 pre-service and in-service primary and secondary schoolteachers (20 per country). During this third phase, recruited teachers work in video-club settings—a novel professional-development (PD) approach—through iterative cycles of experimentation with the EDUCATE materials and reflection upon their practice. In the fourth phase, we examine the effectiveness of the EDUCATE materials and PD, by using a piecewise linear growth model to explore changes in the instructional quality in teachers’ lessons and a phenomenological approach to investigate their experiences. The project culminates by revising the EDUCATE materials based on the lessons learned from this examination and by producing an e-learning course for teachers and teacher educators. Thus, key EDUCATE results pertain to producing validated, effective, and transferable curriculum materials for teachers AND teacher educators that concurrently attend to excellence and equity; educating teachers on how to use them; and raising awareness among different policy makers and stakeholders about the importance of attending to both excellence and equity while also providing them with tools (e.g., a classroom observation rubric) for doing so. Because the EDUCATE outputs will be open-access and disseminated through several venues, the expected impact of the project on teacher educators, teachers, and students—the ultimate recipients of high-quality instruction—is expected to be long term, as typical of actions aimed to educate teachers to improve the quality of their instruction.
Schools in several European countries frequently fail to provide both excellence and equity in mathematics teaching: more than 20% of European students do not reach a minimum level of basic skills in mathematics; only 2%-3% of them reach the highest level of proficiency; and large variations in achievement exist among students within schools, indicating that schools fail to create equitable learning environments for their students (OECD, 2016). Supporting teachers to combat this challenge requires that teachers be afforded curriculum materials that provide specific support and solid guidelines to teach for excellence and equity, as well as professional development (PD) on how to do so. Responding to this dual need, the main goal of the EDUCATE project was to develop, implement, validate, and refine materials for teachers and teacher educators (TEs) that address issues of cognitive activation (CA) and differentiation (DI) in an integrated manner –which was missing from past work attending to either excellence or equity. More crucially, the project aimed at educating teachers to use these materials by engaging them in guided reflection around their practice and to scaffold TEs to offer solid guidance to teachers in doing so. Working in four EU countries (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal) to minimize context dependencies and ensure the transferability of the materials produced, the project unfolded in four phases. In the first, EU/(inter)national policy documents on excellence and equity were reviewed, as well as prior studies on teachers’ needs and challenges when having to teach for both goals. This top-down approach was complemented by a bottom-up approach involving 66 lesson observations of a maximum variation sample of 33 prospective and practising primary or secondary teachers and 66 pre- and post-lesson interviews with them to identify their actual and perceived needs and challenges when having to engage all their students in challenging tasks. In the second phase, building on this needs-assessment analysis, we developed five modules for teachers and five associated modules for TEs, which aimed at helping them effectively deal with the most crucial challenges identified. After being content-validated and pilot-tested, these modules were implemented with 76 primary and secondary teachers (20 prospective and 56 practicing) working in different school settings (including underserved areas). During this third phase, recruited teachers worked in video-club settings through iterative cycles of experimentation with the EDUCATE materials and reflection upon their practice, facilitated by 16 TEs. TE logs (N=96) and teacher reflection cards (N=401), providing feedback on the implementation of the EDUCATE packages, were completed at the end of each video-club session and were used formatively to inform and refine the PD approach offered. In the fourth phase, we examined the effectiveness of the EDUCATE materials and PD approach. Specifically, the videotaped lessons were coded using an observation rubric developed in the third phase, which comprised a set of 35 phase-level and 10 lesson-level codes related to CA, DI and their interplay. By using linear growth models, we explored changes in the instructional quality in the 201 teachers’ videotaped lessons. Written memos of the videotaped video-club meetings (N=107) and end-of-project teacher/focus group interviews (N=76) were analysed following a phenomenological approach and constant comparative method to investigate participants’ experiences, (re)conceptualisations of CA and DI, and enduring challenges. The project culminated by revising the EDUCATE materials based on the lessons learned from this examination and by producing an e-learning course for teachers and TEs, which is hosted on the EDUCATE platform. The key EDUCATE results pertained to (a) producing a validated, effective, and transferable series of self-contained modules for teachers and their accompanying modules for TEs that concurrently attend to CA and DI; (b) identifying what is feasible to expect from teachers at different educational levels (primary vs. secondary) and career stages (prospective vs. practising)—as suggested by the statistically significant changes identified in aspects of teachers’ practice; (c) surfacing ways in which the modules produced and the adopted PD approach scaffolded teachers’ thinking and work around CA and DI; and (d) identifying challenges that teachers encounter as they currently work at both fronts. The project also raised awareness among different policy makers, stakeholders and researchers about the importance of attending to both CA and DI. Because the EDUCATE outputs are open-access and disseminated through several venues, such as the EDUCATE platform (educate-platform.com/) and website (www.ucy.ac.cy/educate/en/), the impact of the project on TEs, teachers, and foremost students—the ultimate recipients of high-quality instruction—is expected to be long term.