MTEP 2.0 is scaling up its national network to reflect a mathematics teacher education community that mirrors the richness and diversity in the types of post-secondary institutions that comprise the higher education landscape in the United States of America. More specifically, MTEP is engaging and learning from institutions of higher education that serve high proportions of minoritized students.
These Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), which include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), play a key role in preparing mathematics teacher educators, especially in the production of teachers from minoritized communities. The current shortage of well-prepared mathematics teachers is a national problem that impacts students across communities, especially those in the highest-need school districts. The MTEP 2.0 leadership team strongly advocates that predominantly white institutions and MSIs form equitable, bidirectional relationships in which they leverage each other’s strengths to eradicate this teacher shortage.
Immediately following the funding award from the National Science Foundation in October 2022, the MTEP 2.0 partnership purposefully started to seek membership of various MSIs in the nation to scale up the network. As part of the process, MTEP 2.0 reached out to its resource partner the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network for a list of all MSIs in the U.S.A. This list helped MTEP 2.0 prioritize colleges and universities to invite for membership. Thus far, two informational webinars have been held for these institutions to share basic program information and the application process for joining the MTEP 2.0 network. A third session is scheduled for November 1, 2023. (See event details.) The process to gain membership in MTEP 2.0 was also disseminated at the 2023 Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) Conference in New Orleans and will be shared again at the association’s 2024 convening in Orlando.
Interested institutions can join one of the existing 19 teams in MTEP 2.0, encompassing 44 programs across the country, or form a new team, which must include a teacher preparation program and a school district. By 2025, MTEP’s goal is to grow the network to 65 programs, including 11 MSIs, constituting a broader Networked Improvement Community with diverse voices that will promote secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs that better align with AMTE’s Standards for Preparing Teachers of Mathematics.
To learn more about the MTEP 2.0 Team application process, see the Membership Toolkit.