by Brian Lawler, PhD, Kennesaw State University MTEP team member, former team leader
As diverse as secondary mathematics programs are, we all share one thing in common—we have many, many stakeholders whose voices and contributions shape the preparation of our future teachers. And engaging meaningfully with all stakeholders is quite the challenge! At Kennesaw State University, we do so through a variety of structures.
While the core of our team includes five secondary mathematics faculty, we recognize that many more stakeholders impact the teachers we prepare. These include other mathematics faculty, other college of education faculty and administrators, and local school district personnel. As we began our participation with MTEP and considered the value of engaging these partners in our work to assess and give vision to our program, it was daunting to consider how to engage everyone! We settled on a few structures that sustain our work, along with a constant reminder to maintain contact with stakeholders who aren’t able to regularly participate.
I served as the program coordinator for our undergraduate and graduate 6–12 mathematics teacher credentialing programs. In that role, I held monthly meetings with the tenure-track secondary mathematics education faculty. While these meetings helped maintain our professional and personal relationships, as well as address our other programs, the teacher preparation programs remain central. During the meetings, we carried out the work of the state- and university-defined program assessment practices and discussed student and programmatic celebrations and challenges. The NIC structures that our MTEP membership has developed as a part of our membership in MTEP 2.0, namely our root cause analysis, aim, and driver diagram, bring focus to our work—a sort of base to hold together the multiple competing demands on program revisions, data collection, reporting, etc.
Our state accreditation process requires an advisory board. We used this opportunity to gather administration support to hold advisory board meetings each semester specifically for the secondary mathematics programs. The KSU MTEP team invites and typically includes two mathematics faculty, a local high school administrator, one or two district mathematics specialists, and secondary math high school teachers, many of whom are recent credential graduates or graduate students. The team frames these meetings with our MTEP aim and drivers, then engages each constituent to talk about issues present for them in high school mathematics teaching. The semesterly advisory board meetings have helped us all develop recommendations for shaping our work at KSU. Usually these recommendations fit into the team's driver diagram, but when they don’t, the advisory board members suggest future refinements.
As mentioned, KSU administration supports these advisory board meetings through both organizing invitations and space, providing food, and welcoming our partners. Our dean and department chair were part of our original participation with MTEP. My primary role regarding keeping them involved was to remind them of our MTEP-guided activities, especially accomplishments. We try to help our administrators report partnerships that they can celebrate. Further, we help them see how our MTEP work supports their priorities, such as increasing STEM teacher enrollment, partnerships, and funded grants, such as an NSF Noyce grant held by one of the partners.
In addition, the KSU MTEP team maintains relationships with other stakeholders within the university with persistent attention to providing information and asking their input. For example, I joined a Mathematics Department meeting once per year for a 90-minute discussion of K-12 teaching. In a recent year, we brought in KSU mathematics graduates who were now teachers to speak about their experiences at KSU and as teachers. I also met with STEM advisors across campus biannually to provide a Get-The-Facts-Out-style overview of the teaching career, answer some basic questions about pathways to teacher certification, and be sure they know to send interested students to me with questions. Finally, just recently we shared a print flier of a KSU-branded version of the GFO Faculty Call to Action cartoon.
Building connections, maintaining friendly relationships, and becoming identified as a point person for math (or STEM) teacher preparation on the campus was one of my primary goals within the university. Building some regular and routine structures for interaction helps advance the collaboration with a few key stakeholders.