The Oregon Mathematics Leadership Institute is a partnership between Oregon State University, Portland State University, Teachers Development Group, and 10 Oregon school districts, with approximately 180 teachers and 100 administrators participating across the 10 partner districts. OMLI works to build collaborative professional learning communities within the participating schools through a series of intensive summer institutes and follow-up academic year professional development activities for teams of teachers and administrators.
The primary activity of the OMLI project is the development of a cadre of mathematics teachers as school -and district-based intellectual leaders and master teachers through a series of intensive summer institutes and follow-up academic year activities. Three consecutive summer institutes (2005, 2006, 2007) combined rigorous and relevant mathematics content coursework with leadership development workshops and seminars. Academic year activities facilitate the ongoing development of collaborative professional learning communities of K-12 teachers, school administrators, and higher education faculty. The central research theme for the project’s evaluation plan is on improving mathematical discourse in the classroom.
The summer institutes included mathematics content coursework across six strands: numbers and operations, algebraic structures, measure and change, geometry, data analysis and probability, and discrete mathematics. The mathematics content coursework was complemented by leadership development coursework. Academic year activities facilitate the ongoing development of collaborative professional learning communities within each participating school. These activities promote student discourse in mathematics and to increase student achievement in mathematics.
The OMLI Partnership received major funding from the National Science Foundation and additional funding through the Oregon Department of Education in support of its activities. Oregon State University serves as the lead institution in the partnership.
OMLI Project Leaders
Principal Investigator: Thomas Dick, Oregon State University, Mathematics Department
Co-PI: Karen Higgins, Oregon State University, School of Education
Co-PI and Project Director: Linda Foreman, Teachers Development Group
Project Evaluator: David Weaver, Senior Research Associate, RMC Research Corporation
OMLI Partner Institutions
Oregon K-12 School District Partners: Beaverton, Bend-LaPine, Crook County, Molalla River, North Clackamas, Redmond, Reynolds, Roseburg, South Lane, and Woodburn
University Partners: Oregon State University (OSU) and Portland State University (PSU)
Non-Profit Partner: Teachers Development Group (TDG), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit mathematics professional development organization and affiliate of Portland State University’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Additional interesting reading: Most Likely to Succeed by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker
