K-5 Virginia Mathematics Specialist Project: A Preliminary Report
Each of the six case study participant are housed in a different school district. Four participants serve in districts located outside major metropolitan areas and two participants serve schools located in urban settings. At the outset of the project, 3 of the participants were mathematics specialists in their respective districts. Presently five of the case study participants serve in a mathematics specialist role. The remaining participant continues to be a regular classroom teacher.
We documented the case study teachers' participation in each of the 5 mathematics courses and three educational leadership courses that are part of the degree program. We also made on-site visits to observe the case study teachers' leadership activities in their respective school buildings. In addition to making observations, we conducted interviews with the participants and fellow school-building teachers with whom they have worked. Three of the 5 mathematics courses and 2 of the educational leadership courses were videotaped. All interviews have been audio recorded.
We are in the process of compiling information from our observations as well as videotape and audio recordings to develop the case studies. As we organize and synthesize the raw data, we will develop narrative accounts of case study participants' experiences as they progressed through the Masters' program. Because we are still in the process of collecting raw case data (Patton, 2002), one of the aims of our discussion is to provide a preliminary account of data that we are in the process of organizing.
In our presentation, we provide examples from several of case study participants school building activities and coordinate these activities with their experiences in the mathematics and leadership courses. By doing so, we attempt to illustrate how the participants' experiences in the degree program supported their leadership roles.
