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Erikson’s Early Mathematics Education Project aims to improve the quality of early math education and ensure that young children are introduced to foundational mathematics.

Since 2007, the project has provided professional development training in mathematics to more than 300 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). An early program evaluation indicated that for every school year children spent in the classrooms of teacher-participants, they gained an additional three months of mathematical learning. Among children who began the school year behind national norms, their growth was closer to five additional months of learning.

The math project is now working with prekindergarten to third grade teachers in eight CPS elementary schools with the support of an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This five-year initiative will help high-needs students in Chicago reach or exceed state and national Common Core Standards for Mathematics (CCSM) and will create within-school math teaching expertise that will persist beyond the life of the project. The project is conducting research on the change in teachers’ attitudes, knowledge, and practice, and is documenting children’s mathematics performance as the result of the intervention program.

Professor Jie-Qi Chen is the principal investigator of the Early Mathematics Project; Jennifer McCray, Ph.D. ’08, is project director.

Major funding for this project is provided by the CME Group Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation Fund, with additional support provided by Motorola Foundation, Chicago Public Schools Office of Early Childhood Education, Exelon Corporation, and the Robert and Isabelle Bass Foundation.

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International Symposium on Early Mathematics Education »