A volume in Research in Mathematics Education Series Editor Barbara J. Dougherty, University of Mississippi The purpose of this book is to document the work of the Show-Me Project (1997-2007) and to highlight lessons learned about curriculum implementation. Although the Show-Me Project was charged with promoting the dissemination and implementation of four distinct comprehensive curriculum programs (Connected Mathematics, Mathematics in Context, MathScape, and MathThematics), most of the lessons learned from this work are not curriculum specific. Rather, they cut across the four programs and share commonalities with standards-based curriculum reform at any level. We believe that documenting these lessons learned will be one of the legacies of the Show-Me Project We anticipate that the comprehensive nature of this work will attract readers from multiple audiences that include state and district mathematics supervisors, middle grades mathematics teachers and administrators involved in curriculum reform, as well as mathematics teacher educators. Those about to embark on the review of curriculum materials will appreciate reading about the processes employed by other districts. Readers with interests in a particular curriculum program will be able to trace the curriculum-specific chapters to gain insights into how the design of the curricula relate to professional development, adoption and implementation issues, and teachers' personal experience using the curriculum materials. Individuals who provide professional development at the middle grades level will find chapters that they can use for both general and focused discussions. Teachers at all stages of implementation will recognize their own experiences in reading and reflecting on the stories of teacher change. Mathematics educators will find ideas on how these curricula can be used in the preparation of preservice middle grades teachers.

A volume in Research in Mathematics Education Series Editor Barbara J. Dougherty, University of Mississippi The purpose of this book is to document the work of the Show-Me Project (1997-2007) and to highlight lessons learned about curriculum implementation. Although the Show-Me Project was charged with promoting the dissemination and implementation of four distinct comprehensive curriculum programs (Connected Mathematics, Mathematics in Context, MathScape, and MathThematics), most of the lessons learned from this work are not curriculum specific. Rather, they cut across the four programs and share commonalities with standards-based curriculum reform at any level. We believe that documenting these lessons learned will be one of the legacies of the Show-Me Project We anticipate that the comprehensive nature of this work will attract readers from multiple audiences that include state and district mathematics supervisors, middle grades mathematics teachers and administrators involved in curriculum reform, as well as mathematics teacher educators. Those about to embark on the review of curriculum materials will appreciate reading about the processes employed by other districts. Readers with interests in a particular curriculum program will be able to trace the curriculum-specific chapters to gain insights into how the design of the curricula relate to professional development, adoption and implementation issues, and teachers' personal experience using the curriculum materials. Individuals who provide professional development at the middle grades level will find chapters that they can use for both general and focused discussions. Teachers at all stages of implementation will recognize their own experiences in reading and reflecting on the stories of teacher change. Mathematics educators will find ideas on how these curricula can be used in the preparation of preservice middle grades teachers.

Teachers are becoming engaged in research in a variety of ways and their voices are gaining presence in the mathematics education research community. The chapters in this volume cover questions that capture the attention of teachers in grades 3-5, the methodologies they use to gather data and the ways in which they make sense of what they find. The research provides items for further thinking and discussion about critical aspects of mathematics education. This book demonstrates how the authors' research increased their awareness of how students come to know and understand mathematics. Classroom research is often used to back up theories and create and implement curriculum, but how well is the research process understood? This series, published in cooperation with Information Age Publishing, sheds light on the processes of classroom research, with teachers' accounts that capture the complexity and multi-faceted nature of teaching. With rich examples, the teacher researchers in these books demonstrate how they came to understand their students' reasoning processes and thus learned to intervene more adeptly with the right question, the right comment, a new problem, or silent acknowledgement and support. The series showcases a variety of ways teachers can become engaged in research.

The goal of this series is to use teachers' accounts of classroom inquiry to make public and explicit the processes of doing research in classrooms. Teaching is a complex, multi-faceted task, and this complexity often is not captured in research articles. Our goal is to illuminate this complexity. Research that is done in classrooms by and with teachers is necessarily messy, and our stance is that the ways in which this is so should be articulated, not hidden. Through the chapters in this volume we learn about the questions that capture the attention of teachers, the methodologies they use to gather data, and the ways in which they make sense of what they find. Some of the research findings could be considered preliminary, others confirmatory, and some may be groundbreaking. In all cases, they provide fodder for further thinking and discussion about critical aspects of mathematics education.