Wendy Smith
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Education Research
The U.S. lacks enough well-prepared secondary mathematics teachers, especially in the highest-need school districts.
- Fields
Education Research
Mathematics & Statistics
Social Science
- Topics
mathematics education
teacher preparation
secondary mathematics teachers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Examine how networked improvement communities in the MTEP 2.0 network support, accelerate and sustain changes to secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs, using annual interviews with representative case studies.
- Identify which supports within the network structure help change agents lead program transformation, by coding interviews and project documents in Dedoose with grounded-theory methods.
- Track program progress toward MTEP Guiding Principles and numbers of program completers through surveys, pairing them with qualitative data across Beginning, Progressing, Sustaining and Re-establishing networks.
More about the research
This project asks how universities can change their teacher preparation programs to match national recommendations, and how working in networks helps that change start, speed up and last.
Why it matters
The project could help universities prepare more, and more diverse, secondary math teachers for high-need districts, potentially reaching over 2,500 future teachers. A tested model of networked improvement communities could guide math teacher programs nationwide and be adapted to other areas of teacher preparation or education improvement.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Stephanie Casey
Eastern Michigan University, MI·Education Research
Examine how well undergraduate programs prepare teachers for data science and statistics, using surveys and classroom observations of early-career mathematics teachers.
Karen Hollebrands
North Carolina State University, NC·Education Research
Create online modules with high-demand geometry tasks, video cases and grades 6–12 student work that prepare future teachers to lead productive discussions using web-based dynamic geometry tools.
Yaomingxin Lu
California State University-Fresno, CA·Education Research
Engage 32 pre-service secondary mathematics teachers in mentored research in areas including data science, statistics, mathematical biology, knot theory and number theory through a summer program and academic year.
The school
University of Nebraska-Lincoln: 17 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 261 research doctorates a year.
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