About the Project

The major goals of the McDaniel College EMS&TL Project are to fully establish the McDaniel College graduate program leading to an MS degree in elementary mathematics teacher leadership, to develop a clearinghouse relative to elementary mathematics specialist programs nationally, and to ensure the continuing professional development and mentoring of a cadre of mathematics teacher-leaders and elementary school mathematics specialists in Maryland. Additionally, the project seeks to determine the impact of mathematics specialists and mathematics teacher specialists on student achievement and school and school district improvement regionally, statewide, and potentially, nationally.

This is a proposed multi-year project, with the formal establishment of the Elementary Mathematics Teacher Leadership Program as a stand alone program within the McDaniel College graduate degree offerings during the 2008-2009 academic year. It is hoped that this initiative will serve as a catalyst and model for other area institutions as well as provide the momentum to move the Maryland State Department of Education to acknowledge and support the certification of elementary mathematics specialists. An important element of the EMS&TL Project will be the creation of a project clearinghouse to not only collect and analyze data relative to the impact of the work of the EMS&TL project, but also to locate and disseminate information relative to similar projects and to begin to document the impact of mathematics teacher specialists and elementary mathematics specialists on student learning and school and school district effectiveness on a national, and to some extent, international level.

The EMS&TL project has multiple components: (1) establishing and maintaining the project clearinghouse; (2) revising established McDaniel College courses and developing new ones relevant to the MS degree program; (3) planning and delivering annual summer seminars focusing on mathematics content, pedagogy, and leadership issues for elementary mathematics specialists within the region and state; (4) participation in the Maryland Council of Teachers of Mathematics and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conferences, plus additional regional symposia and workshops (as relevant); and (5) a rigorous evaluation of the project and its impact by an external evaluator. At this writing negotiations are in progress regarding additional support for this project in the development of online leadership modules for elementary mathematics specialists. This work would extent the EMS&TL Project and link its work to an effort of the University of Michigan.

The CISCO Learning Institute’s is extending the work of the EMS&TL Project. Project Director, Professor Francis (Skip) Fennell, leads the effort to develop leadership module(s) to be piloted regionally and nationally and be a component of the University of Michigan project which focuses on the mathematics content and pedagogy background of elementary teachers. Fennell is engaging a subset of the McDaniel College EMS&TL staff as a core team whose work is to create the leadership modules in partnership with the larger project being developed by the University of Michigan design team. Professor Fennell oversees all work and is the Project Investigator (PI) of the EMS&TL project. Jon Wray is serving as project manager. This project will run for two-and-a-half years, starting gradually in the Spring/Summer of 2009 and continuing through early Summer of 2011.