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What is the issue we are trying to address? Our
existing degrees are not preparing students to be as strong researchers
as we would like. Students do not have significant opportunities to
engage in the practices of research early in their graduate school
careers. Opportunities to learn about and conduct research are often
contingent on the particular assistantships that students have and are
not a systematic part of their early experiences in our programs.
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How do we know that this is an issue? Our
students have very varied experiences with research when they reach the
practica or dissertation stage. The "leap" from methods courses to
designing, conducting, and reporting on a study is quite large and it
is one that students find challenging. We are also not graduating
students who go on to research-intensive university positions.
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What is the change or innovation that is intended to address this issue? All
of the mathematics education courses offered as part of the new program
have required "course projects." These relatively small projects
provide students with opportunities to design, conduct, and report on
reserach from their very first semester in the program. These projects
can form the basis for larger "practica" requirements and pilot studies
for dissertations. We have also incorporated a masters degree stage
into our doctoral program. This means that students will need to
complete a masters-level research thesis along the way to their Ph.D.
The format of the dissertation may be the traditional monograph or it
may be comprised of several related, publishable articles. In addition,
students may elect to produce research projects together with student
or faculty colleagues, reflecting the collaborative nature of work in
the broader educational field.
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Why did we select that approach? The
ideas came from discussions among the Mathematics Education Faculty. We
began to implement course projects a few years ago because that was one
aspect of our students' experiences that we could modify within the
existing program stuctures. We also felt it was important for students
to have experiences of increasing size as they move towards the
dissertation and the jump between coursework and the reserach practia
(typically completed in the 3rd or 4th year) seemed especially
difficult for students. We also wanted to explore alternative formats
for the dissertation so that students could emerge from the program
with several publishable articles already completed instead of needing
to transform a monograph-format dissertation into separate articles.
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What is the intended effect of the innovation? The
intent behind this innovation is to provide students with
opportunities, early on, to experience many aspects of the process of
conducting research. This will generate learning opportunities that are
not possible when research is delayed until later in a program and will
enable students to become active members of the local research
community from the start of their programs.
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What data or evidence will demonstrate the effect of our innovation? We
will be able to gauge the impact of our innovation by the quality of
the course projects that students project, as well as their research
practia and dissertations. We expect that these changes will also help
students become active in the broader mathematics education community
while they are still in graduate school since they are encouraged to
submit their course projects and practica for presentation at national
conferences. We have some evidence to suggest that the innovation is
already working to some extent: many of our students presented their
projects at a recent mathematics education reserach conference.
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