What They Look Like/View of Learning Trajectory

First Steps in Mathematics (FSiM)

What they look like/view of learning trajectory

First Steps, is a professional development program and series of teacher resource books published by Pearson that is intended to help teachers (Pre-school – Grade 9) diagnose, plan, implement and evaluate students’ mathematics learning. The program, developed in Australia through the collaboration of mathematics education researchers and elementary classroom teachers, includes four components: Diagnostic Maps, Diagnostic Tasks, Key Understandings and Sample Learning Activities. The Diagnostic Maps shows the progression of mathematics learning for students from pre-school to Grade 8. The maps present six phases in the development of mathematical thinking: Emergent, Matching, Quantifying, Partitioning, Factoring and Operating. Diagnostic maps show these six phases for each mathematics strand. Each phase for each strand includes a number of Diagnostic Tasks that are designed to help teachers uncover the critical misconceptions their students may have.

What mathematical areas/concepts/big ideas and grades do they cover

First Steps teacher resources are available for four mathematics strands: Number, Measurement, Space (Geometry), and Chance and Data (Analysis and Probability). Facilitator professional development courses using the train-the-trainer model are available for the Number strand.

How is it being used?

Pearson provides documents to show the links between the Key Understandings in First Stepsand the curriculum expectations or standards for some jurisdictions. For instance correlations between Key Understandings and curriculum expectations from the Ontario curriculum for Grade 5 area available (add ref). Similar links are shown for the Western and Northern Canadian Protocol as well as the Common Core State Standards (add a ref for this). Some individual school boards in provinces such as Saskatchewan, BC and the Yukon have adopted First Steps as a mathematics program. First Steps has also been used by some school boards as the basis for creating their own mathematics program. For instance, Durham Catholic DSB created a continuum based mathematics (CBM) program complete with diagnostic tasks and tracking charts based on an amalgamation of materials from PRIME and First Steps(add ref). They trained 325 K-8 teachers from 20 elementary schools in the use of their CBM program and documented teachers use of the diagnostic tasks and tracking charts, common student misconceptions, and the impact of the program on student achievement. Similarly, PEI used First Steps as the basis of the Early Numeracy Intervention Program (ENIP) they developed in 2010-2011 (add ref). This program involved 255 students, 25 teachers in 14 schools.

While it will continue to be available in Australia, Pearson is closing the international offices as of July 2013. Seems like materials still available from Dept of Ed in Western Australia??

What research supports them

Information from the Pearson website indicates that development of First Steps began in 1995 when the Department of Education and Training in Western Australia commissioned Professor Sue Willis to develop professional development resources for K-8 mathematics. Willis began with an extensive literature review ofempirical research thatresulted in an 60-page bibliography, available from Pearsonupon request. The findings from the studies in this literature review were placed on a wall sized continuum chart. Extensive analysis of this body of research demonstrated common misconceptions across countries, key conceptual phases and gaps (cite Yukon paper for development process).The development team combined Information from the literature review with analysis of more than 10,000 student work samples to develop the diagnostic map and tasks, the key understandings and the sample learning activities. An additional study of 2000 student work samples was used to validate the diagnostic tasks. Not clear if any of this was published in peer reviewed journals though some materials are available from Pearson. A Canadian edition of First Steps was created based on a study with 500 Canadian students that was conducted to confirm that the observations from the previous study were relevant in the Canadian context. Copyright seems to be held by Western Australian Minister of Education and Training, Canadian Edition, 2007 (see Yukon paper).