PMEEP: Does It Creep into the Worldview of Participants? Microethnography Inquiry in Progress.

The Primary Mathematics Education Enhancement Program (PMEEP) is an early childhood teacher enhancement project funded by the National Science Foundation. It is a collaborative project of Kent State University and 11 school districts in a primarily rural midwestern county that has recently been classified as Appalachia. At the conclusion of 2 years, 200 teachers from grades K-2 will have participated in workshops, kept journals, received peer coaching, and helped in a summer curriculum development project. The PMEEP model is based on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics'"Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics," and reflects a constructivist approach to mathematics education that focuses on mathematical problem solving, reasoning, connections, and communication. PMEEP is designed to encourage teachers to modify the curriculum and the language they use, and to adapt its child centered "worldview" in a personally comfortable manner. The purpose of the research effort in PMEEP is to understand if the model works, and the conditions that make it effective. The study, which is currently being conducted, includes three components: (1) data collection through teacher surveys and journals; (2) case studies of four schools; and (3) microethnographies of three classrooms. This document describes the results of the microethnography for three teachers and some of the theoretical considerations behind the ethnographic portion of the study. (MDH)