By Audrey Malagon

In order for high impact teaching practices, such as inquiry based learning (IBL), to be effective, instructors must feel equipped to use them in their actual classrooms. This goal of getting effective inquiry-based pedagogy into more classrooms motivated Stan Yoshinobu and team to launch NSF PRODUCT (PROfessional Development and Uptake through Collaborative Teams) which has just completed its final year, running from 2015 to 2021. Here Stan tells us about the project and its impact.

Tell us about your history with professional development for teachers and your motivations for launching the PRODUCT program.

My roots in professional development go back to working with K-12 math teachers. I have been part of the California Math Project since 2002 and also did work with local school districts and Native Peoples when I was a postdoc at the University of Arizona. From those experiences, I learned about running workshops and helping teachers in real classrooms with real students. None of this was abstract. It was down to working with dedicated teachers trying to make a better experience for their students.

After I started developing my own IBL teaching skills and gaining experience running courses, I had moment after moment where I thought to myself that it would have been a lot easier if I could go to a workshop on how to teach via IBL. In grad school I was only taught basic pedagogical techniques. Having seen how effective professional development for teaching can be, it seemed natural that there could be a professional development model for teaching college math classes via IBL.

NSF has been instrumental in funding initiatives to improve college math education. NSF PRODUCT is a natural extension of NSF SPIGOT (Supporting Pedagogical Innovation for a Generation of Transformation via Inquiry-Based Learning in Mathematics), a project that ran from 2012-2016. We wanted to build on long-standing work we had put in the decade prior and scale up professional development to more facilitators and hence more college math instructors and students. We gathered useful data in past projects, and used that to expand from developing the IBL workshops to building capacity in the profession to offer IBL workshops more broadly. This expansion required us to construct a broader, more diverse group of faculty with expertise in IBL.

The PRODUCT program combined in-person, online, and traveling workshops to train instructors in IBL methods. In addition, it used a train-the-trainers approach to equip facilitators who had experience with these teaching methods to assist in running these workshops.

Tell us more about how you designed these workshops for maximum impact.

We designed the workshop so that it has specific roles for facilitators. In this way, facilitators can focus on a single thread of the workshop, such as running the video lesson study sessions or the nuts and bolts of running an IBL course (e.g. course logistics). This makes it both easier to implement for new facilitators, and supports the goal of expanding the number of people who are capable of running IBL workshops.

Having a team of facilitators also ensures that each team has multiple perspectives and experiences, allowing participants to see that IBL teaching is a “big tent.” There exist many ways to teach effectively via IBL, and having a group of 4 or 5 facilitators helps participants find solutions that work for them.

What impacts have you seen from this project after its successful completion?

Our evaluation reports indicate that the IBL Workshops have impacted more than 500 college math instructors. These instructors have taught more than 20,000 students using IBL methods in the first year after attending a workshop. Some IBL Workshop alumni and facilitators have taken on leadership roles to further promote and expand the use of IBL methods across North America.

Research evidence accumulated over the past decade or more strongly suggests that active learning, such as inquiry-based learning, improves student learning outcomes and can level the playing field for women and other minoritized people. Getting high impact teaching practices used in classrooms is a core implementation challenge in mathematics, and professional development is one of the levers for change.

What did you learn from the project? What changes or adjustments did you have to make along the way?

As in teaching, our team always learns more than anyone else involved. We have learned more about running workshops and how to be better facilitators and hosts. We have also learned so much from the community in the area of equity and inclusion. The fourth pillar of IBL is “instructor focus on equity.” We learned, in light of the social unrest in 2020, that we needed to do more, and we have since become much more intentional and thoughtful about social justice.

Tell us about the people involved in the project.

We have a huge team of people, and if anyone reading this learns only one thing about this project, it is that it is this dedicated group of people that made it all happen. I am truly grateful that I was able to work with an amazing group of people.

Readers can also find quotes from participants in this related blog post. HERE

Learn more about NSF DUE (#) 1525058

Full Project Name: Collaborative Research: PROfessional Development and Uptake through Collaborative Teams (PRODUCT) Supporting Inquiry Based Learning in Undergraduate Mathematics

Abstract Link: https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1525058

Project Contact: Stan Yoshinobu, styoshin@calpoly.edu

• Responses in this blog were edited for length and clarity.