Improve math teaching with incremental improvements

Abstract

Past educational reforms have failed because they didn’t meet teachers where they were. They expected major changes in practices that may have been unrealistic for many teachers even under ideal professional learning conditions. Instead of promoting broad scale changes, improvement may be more likely if they are composed of small yet powerful changes that teachers can implement relatively easily in their instruction. A focus on incremental change begins with the elements of instruction that teachers recognize, support, and/or perceive themselves to be using already and then leverages these instructional practices for future change.