MARS Evaluation Evidence
MARS sections

Team:
Overview

MARS brings together a national and international team of people with diverse experience in mathematics education, and its performance assessment. Here we tell you something about those involved.

MARS is based at Michigan State University, with two other centers at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Shell Center for Mathematical Education at the University of Nottingham, England. Something of the background work of these groups is given below; for over two decades the members have been designing and implementing performance assessment, and curriculum and professional development support. MARS also draws on others with appropriate skills, from across the States and worldwide.

MARS Directorate

MARS is led by a Directorate:

The Michigan State Group

The Michigan State group has long been a leading contributor to the reform movement in mathematics education. A series of projects has done pioneering work in curriculum, assessment, and teacher professional development at the preservice and inservice levels. These include, among others, the NSF-funded Middle Grades Mathematics Project, Connected Mathematics Project, the Elementary Mathematics Study, a longitudinal research project of the National Center for Research on Teacher Education, and the NSF-funded Assessment in the Service of Instruction Project. In the ten years since she began collaborating with this group, Sandra Wilcox has become a leader of their work on assessment, school-based inquiry and qualitative research.

The MSU group includes Carol Crumbaugh, Liz Jones, Joan Kenney (based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education), Marcia Ratliff, Kyle Ward, Sandra Wilcox and Judith Zawojewski (based at Purdue University).

The Berkeley Group

Berkeley is the base of the Balanced Assessment project. This group has carried major responsibility for its elementary and high school developments. Alan Schoenfeld, who leads the project, is one of the nation's leaders in assessment - among other things. EMST, the group on Education in Mathematics Science and Technology within the Graduate School of Education at Berkeley, has a wide ranging research program. It includes, for example, an innovative teacher preparation program , built on cognitive science, various long-term studies of computer-supported learning environments, and a strong group on the analysis of teaching.

The Shell Center Group
(University of Nottingham)

The Shell Center group has been pioneering assessment-linked curriculum reform since 1980, working with two of the UK's largest examination boards, and with other organizations worldwide. Led by Hugh Burkhardt, this group developed a series of initiatives including, for example:

  • year-by-year introduction of new task types into established performance-based examinations, with comprehensive support materials linking the new assessment, appropriate classroom instruction, and in- school professional development;
  • curriculum-embedded group-project assessment units, with individual assessment;
  • support materials for curriculum-embedded extended tasks for portfolios at Grade 10.

Some of these materials are well-known in the US. Members of the design team - Malcolm Swan and Rita Crust - are senior examiners in the UK assessment system. Together they provide MARS with a think-tank that is experienced in all aspects of large-scale performance assessment. Their work in the US began in the mid 1980's and flowered into the Balanced Assessment project. Ridgway, Burkhardt and Swan played key roles in the ICMI study of mathematics assessment worldwide; they remain in close touch with developments in many countries.

The Nottingham members of the team are:

  • Professor Hugh Burkhardt: project design and direction, developer and writer.
  • Malcolm Swan: designer, observer and developer for assessment and professional development, insight research.
  • Dr Alan Bell: observation and analysis, design of analytic frameworks, test balance, trial direction and analysis.
  • Rita Crust: designer, observer and developer for assessment and professional development.
  • Daniel Pead: designer of computer-based tasks and tools, systems analyst and strategic adviser on ICT issues.
  • Dr Richard Phillips: designer and developer, particularly of computer-based materials.
  • Carol Hill: MARS and Shell Centre project secretary.

For more information about the Shell Centre and its publications see www.MathShell.com or email Information@MathShell.com.

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Page updated 15 February 2002
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