Research

TRAIL – Teacher-Researcher Alliance for Investigating Learning

(Funded by the internal grant from the Weizmann Institute of Science and by the Ministry of Education).

TRAIL is a R&D project based on an original theoretical-organizational framework, which is designed for supporting, enhancing and scaling-up partnerships between education researchers and teachers, for the benefit of both. TRAIL is designed so that it makes the borders between teaching, conducting research and implementing it somewhat blurred.

DIALOGUS: Collective reasoning around texts across disciplines towards deliberative democracy

(Funded by the Israel Science Foundation)

The R&D project DIALOGUS aims at enhancing culture of argumentation and accountable talk in school. The project's idea is that secondary-school classes would systematically be engaged in lessons of a special format – dialogical lessons – in a number of disciplines, including mathematics, science, civic education and history. The project is led by a group of five Principle Investigators from four Israeli universities: Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Prof. Baruch Schwarz who is also the Project Coordinator), Tel Aviv University (Prof. Michal Tabach), Technion (Dr. Einat Heyd Metzuyanim) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Prof. Anat Yarden and Prof. Boris Koichu).

ITEM - Innovative Teacher Education in Mathematics

(Funded by ERASMUS+)

The ITEM project envisions to help undergraduate students to realize the impact of mathematics on their studies and professional carrier success. The project main outcomes include (a) the integration real-life problems into Calculus I and Linear Algebra I to show the application of Mathematics in today’s technology; (b) the development of CAS, the incorporation of mobile tools and visualizations along teaching Mathematics; (c) the development of software that allows teachers to early identify student’s that face problem in learning Mathematics and so provide assistance to overcome these challenges; (d) the development of teaching and learning manuals for more effective teaching & learning Mathematics; (e) the training of teacher’s in the most modern & efficient teaching techniques like the Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Project Oriented Based Learning (POPBL) along Mathematics teaching.

The ITEM is a consortium of 16 partners from Programme Countries Institutions (Greece, Spain, Austria, Sweden, North Macedonia) and Partner Countries Institutions (Israel, Kosovo, Uzbekistan). A WIS team, including Dr. Ronnie Karsenty, Dr. Alon Pinto, Dr. Jason Cooper and Prof. Boris Koichu is responsible for Quality Assessment working package of the ITEM.

PD-HMD: Professional Development for Heads of Mathematics Departments

(Funded by the Trump Foundation and the Ministry of Education)

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are known as a particularly effective organizational form for the professional development of teachers. There is a broad vision that school mathematics departments should function as PLCs led by the heads of the departments (in Hebrew, rakazim). The PD-HMD project is designed in order to help this vision materialize. To this end, the PD-HMD develops and supports municipality-level PLCs for present and future heads of middle-school mathematics departments.

In these communities, the participants enrich their mathematical and pedagogical knowledge and develop leadership skills. Both the content and the process of learning in these PLCs aims to provide a model for the school heads of mathematics departments to draw on in leading their local communities. The project offers 60-hour and 30-hour PD programs. Each PLC is led by a WIS researcher and a representative of the local community. Evidence of dissemination of innovative teaching practices in participating schools serves as the main success criterion in the project.