Math education is built on claims about teaching, learning, curriculum, and educational improvement. But how strong is the evidence underlying those claims?
Inspecting Foundations is a collaborative research project that identifies important claims in math education, traces the evidence on which they are based, and examines how much confidence that evidence warrants.
Of particular interest are claims linking features of math instruction to various student outcomes (see a tentative list of claims). Our goal is not simply to ask whether a claim is true or false. Instead, we ask: What evidence supports this claim, and how confident should we be in it?Â
We pay particular attention to the difference between evidence for a feature of math instruction as implemented in idealized or non-ordinary circumstances (POTENTIAL IMPACT on student outcomes) and the evidence for a feature of math instruction as implemented in widespread and ordinary circumstances (EXPECTED IMPACT on student outcomes).
All math educators are invited to fill out this 5-minute survey to help identify key claims about math teaching and learning and to prioritize our inspections:
QUICK SURVEY [URL: https://missouri.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_etgNWpHn8KZhnds]
We are interested in your professional opinions about the actual links between math teaching and learning, which may or may not match what is assumed in academic writings.
The Inspecting Foundations project team is being formed. Future versions of this site will share the claims we are inspecting, the evidence we uncover, and our assessments of the strength of that evidence.