End-of-Year Preceptee Questionnaire

To Project RENEW preceptees:
As part of the Research and Evaluation Team, we thank you to for your participation in Project RENEW. The National Science Foundation funds this project, and we are accountable to NSF for an evaluation of the quality and impact of Project RENEW. We greatly appreciate the time you are taking to again, answer questions about mathematics education and the project. Your responses will provide important information for the evaluation and will be combined with responses of the other beginning teachers in the project and used for evaluation purposes only.

Thank you for your thoughts and time,
Sarah Hough and Nancy O’Rode

Part I: Background Information

First Name: Last Name:
What is your ethnicity? (optional)    
What school do you teach at? Which district?

How many years have you been with this district?
How many years have you been teaching?
What grade level do you currently teach?
   
Do you have a teaching credential? Yes No
If yes, from which institution?

What other professional development projects are you involved in this year? (Please also include those that are district mandated)

Will you participate in this project next year? YES MAYBE NO

Part II: Doing Mathematics. Each of the statements below refers to “doing mathematics”. For each item select from the menu the extent to which you agree with the statement.

asdf Strongly Agree Agree Not Sure Disagree Strongly Disagree
1. When you do mathematics there is always a right way to go about doing things and answers are not open to interpretation.
2. Investigating new situations and relationships among concepts are important parts of doing mathematics.
3. Some people are better at doing mathematics than others because they have a certain kind of mathematical mind.
4. Collaborating with other people to share ideas and verify conjectures is an important part of doing mathematics.
5. Doing mathematics mostly involves memorizing facts and procedures.
6. Doing mathematics is a step-by-step mechanical process.
7. When doing mathematics it is not important to understand why a procedure works only that it will give you the right answer.
8. When doing mathematics, if you don't understand something you need to get help from a text book or the instructor.
9. Doing mathematics is thought-provoking.
10. When doing mathematics you are discovering patterns and making generalizations.
11. Mathematics is most often a solitary activity.
12. Unlike most other subjects, when you are doing mathematics you are always dealing with known quantities.
13. Doing mathematics is a creative process.
14. There are many ways to go about solving most problems in mathematics.

PART III: Teaching Mathematics. Each of the statements below refers to TEACHING mathematics. For each item select from the menu the extent to which you agree with the statement.

asdf Strongly Agree Agree Not Sure Disagree Strongly Disagree
1. Using cooperative learning techniques in mathematics instruction is not appropriate for high achieving students.
2. In mathematics students cannot understand high level concepts until they have mastered the "basic" steps of a given procedure or algorithm.
3. When teaching mathematics the teacher should demonstrate the mathematics steps clearly and slowly and then give students time to learn the steps by repetition.
4. Students generally learn mathematics best in classes/groups with students of similar abilities.
5. The best way for students to learn mathematics is to do many similar types of problems until they get the procedure down.
6. It is better to teach mathematical ideas directly to students than to let then figure out relationships for themselves.
7. When working with slow learners in mathematics teachers should focus a lot of instruction on "basic skills."
8. To learn math students should be given plenty of opportunities to engage in inquiry oriented activities.
9. Encouraging students to make conjectures in mathematics is not necessary because the purpose of instruction is to get them to remember and apply math facts.
10. Encouraging students to explore their own methods of solving a problem is as important as teaching mathematical formulas and procedures.

PART IV: What Are Your Needs? Please indicate how well prepared you feel to do each of the following:

  not adequately prepared
 somewhat prepared fairly well prepared very well prepared
1. Lead a class of students using investigative strategies
2. Manage a class of students engaged in hands-on/project based work.
3. Help students take responsibility for their own learning.
4. Recognize and respond to student diversity.
5. Encourage students' interest in mathematics.
6. Use strategies that specifically encourage participation of minorities and females in mathematics.

7. Please let us know in how much participating in project RENEW has helped or supported you in the following areas:

 
A lot
Somewhat
Not at All
1. Gave me information about investigative activities and strategies to use in my classroom to teach math.
2. Gave strategies and techniques for managing multiple levels of student understanding of math content in the classroom.
3. Gave ideas to make math fun/exciting/ interesting/connected to real life.
4. Facilitated meeting/building relationships with/support other teachers.
5. Gave materials for specific concepts.
6. Helped with ideas for curriculum mapping.
7. Encouraged a renewed interest in and understanding of mathematics.
8. Balance between skills and problem solving.
9. Allowed us to work in grade level groups/ and do useful grade level activities.
10. Helped me with time management in relationship to teaching math content.
11. Helped me with assessment of students’ mathematical thinking.

Please tell us about other things you feel you have learned or gained from your participation in RENEW.

In what ways could RENEW be modified to better support beginning teachers?