What are the Adult Numeracy Institutes?
This training builds upon National Science Foundation-funded projects and Teachers Investigating Adult Numeracy (TIAN), which became the national Adult Numeracy Instruction (ANI-PD). Each focused on transferring the conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills learned in the classroom to real life. These trainings and resources enabled teachers to model math alongside their students using concrete tools that deepen connections to abstract procedures and often memorized algorithms.
Goals of the Adult Numeracy Institutes
- Provide sustained duration professional development that deepens teachers鈥� conceptual understanding of math across domains.
- Create learning opportunities where teachers engage as students in hands-on activities, discovery, and rich discussion.
- Connect these experiences to instructional strategies, differentiated learning, and hands-on and virtual resources in two standards-aligned, concept-focused curricula: Curriculum for Adults Learning Math (CALM) [22 units] and Beginning Curriculum for Adults Learning Math (BeCALM) Remote-Ready Curriculum for Beginning Math Students (GLE 2鈥�4) [7 units].
- Increase teacher confidence in math content, math coherence, varied instructional strategies, student collaboration and discovery, wait time, and deep questioning.
- Improve outcomes for programs and students through more effective instruction and increased connections to everyday math and numeracy skills that go far beyond passing a test.
- Improve program and student outcomes through stronger instruction and deeper connections to everyday math and numeracy beyond just passing a test.
- Create opportunities for students and teachers to experience math in ways that build their identity as 鈥渁 math person.鈥�
Key Math Domains Covered
- Number and operations (base ten)
- Number and operations (fractions)
- The number system
- Ratio and proportional relationships
- Operations and algebraic thinking
- Geometry
- Measurement and data
- Statistics and probability
- Expressions and equations
- Functions
Overarching Objectives of the Adult Numeracy Institutes
Participants will be able to:
- Gain conceptual understanding of some traditionally-taught math topics;
- Add to their bank of andragogical (teaching of adult learners) strategies for teaching topics;
- Reflect on their own teaching practice in relation to research on teaching and learning math; and
- Apply what was learned between Institutes with resources like the CALM and BeCALM units and lessons.
To inquire about the Adult Numeracy Institutes, contact us at adultnumeracy@terc.edu or use our contact form.