Author: Caleigh Christensen Major: Mathematics

I am a senior honors mathematics student doing research in the mathematical education field. I am researching out of the Fulbright College with my mentor Dr. Shannon Dingman, who is also in the mathematics department. I have been funded by the University of Arkansas Honors College for the Fall 2020 semester and I plan using the information I learned in mathematical education to enter the business analysis field after I graduate in May 2021.

I am doing research on scope and sequence documents in the middle school grade levels throughout the state of Arkansas. Scope and sequence documents are similar to a course outline in a college course syllabus, expect they are more detailed for the teacher’s benefit. For example, these documents may list the Common Core State Standard Code, followed by the time period to teach the standard, then finishing up with the generic title or description of the standard. This is just one-way teachers can organize their scope and sequence documents; there are several different formats they can choose from to organize their information.  What I am looking for in these scope and sequence documents is how they decided to order the standards they are required to teach. Arkansas has adopted the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), which informs Arkansas teachers on exactly what standards they must teach in each grade level; however, the CCSSM leaves the decision on how to order the standards within each grade level up to the teachers. For example, teachers have the power to determine whether they want to teach algebra concepts or geometry concepts first. Because of this fact, every teacher’s scope and sequence documents are different from one another, which leads me to my research on why the teachers decided to order the concepts in the specific way.

This topic about scope and sequence documents stood out to me because of my personal experience with math during the middle school grade levels. In middle school, I went from 6^th grade on-level math in the 6^th grade to 8^thgrade advanced math in the 7^th grade. There were several students along with myself that made this transition, and the teachers were completely unprepared. Their scope and sequence documents didn’t take into account the fact that half of the class never learned 7^th grade math standards. This caused several of my fellow classmates and I to struggle through math in 7^th grade and beyond for many years.

When I was a junior in high school, I was enrolled in AP Calculus AB; since I skipped 7^th grade math, I was enrolled in this class as a junior instead of a senior. I struggled throughout the entire class and at the end of the year, I did not receive a high enough grade on the AP exam to be exempt from Calculus 1 at the University of Arkansas. Therefore, I enrolled in Dr. Dingman’s Calculus 1 class when I was a freshman. Once I learned that Dr. Dingman did research in the mathematical education field, I went to his office to learn more about what he researched. He introduced me to the idea of research scope and sequence documents in middle school grade levels, and that topic really rang true to me and my personal experience with this topic.

Fast forward to the fall 2020 semester, I worked along side Dr. Dingman to develop and distribute surveys to middle school teachers across the state of Arkansas in hopes of learning their rationale behind why they created their scope and sequence documents the way that they did. My goal was to see if there was a trend between the ordering of topics and student’s performance in the class.

After collecting emails from teachers across the state of Arkansas, I distributed the survey in hopes teachers would find the time to complete it. The survey included questions about the rationale behind placing standards in a certain order, how the annual state assessment affects their scope and sequence documents and if they believe the ordering of standards they chose allows the students to make connects between concepts. In addition, I included a few questions about how COVID-19 affected their scope and sequence documents during the 2019-2020 school year and how they have adjusted for this year.

I began sending out surveys at the end of August and received my last response at the end of October. There was a total of 20 responses from 13 different middle schools across the state of Arkansas. I received many messages from teachers responding to the survey explaining how they unfortunately didn’t have the time they wished to complete the survey. Many explained how online/hybrid school has taken a lot of their free time away. Regardless, the 20 teachers who were able to response to the survey provided valuable insight to their decisions and how COVID has affected the school year for them.

When it comes to the how the teachers determined the order of the standards, 45% of the teachers said that the district or head of the math department determines the ordering of the standards and distributes the scope and sequence documents to them. 40% of the teachers said that the order was determined by the ability of the students to build and retain concepts from standard to standard by a small group of teachers working together, while 15% of the teachers said that the order was determined by a textbook or workbook.

As I continue to complete the data analyzation, I am learning that there is so much more that goes into creating and implementing the scope and sequence documents than I originally thought. Thanks to the generosity of the Honors College Research Grant, I have been able to deepen my understanding of how scope and sequence documents are created and start preparing for what’s next for me, which is completing my honors thesis and successfully defending it in Spring 2021 followed by graduating in May.