Introduction to challenges to reform issue

Focus on Learning Problems in Mathematics, Wntr, 2002 by Jean Schmittau

The four manuscripts that follow have been organized to form a cohesive collection for this special issue of Focus. The first three articles offer insight into an effort to reform mathematics education that has been ongoing in an elementary school in the midwest for the past fourteen years. The first paper, Challenges to Reform: An Overview of the Study, gives the history, setting, and context for the reform, and brings the reader up to date on what occurred in the reform process before researchers began to study it five years ago.

The second paper, The Challenges of Instructional Leadership for School Renewal, describes the instructional reform itself, while the third article, Authentic Assessment: A School's Interpretation, presents examples of the assessment measures the staff designed to match the new curriculum and pedagogical approaches. This third paper also explores the challenges encountered by teachers and school leaders as they attempted to restructure their mathematics instruction and develop authentic assessment measures according to the recommendations of the NCTM Standards.

These three articles can be read as one document or singly as "stand alone" papers. For this reason, the reader may find a bit of repetition across the three papers if they are read in a continuous progression, but this was necessary if they were also to be read and understood as single articles.

Finally, the last paper, Exploring the Evolving Nature of Three Elementary Preset-vice Teachers' Beliefs and Practices, examines the link (or gap) between university methods courses and the teaching practices pre-service teachers encounter in their field placements. All four papers provide insights that merit consideration as we enter the second decade of the mathematics education reform movement.