The IU-IMI Partnership
An NSF MSP Project
Linked Courses

As part of the secondary school component of the Indiana University--Indiana Mathematics Initiative Partnership, IU is implementing a program of linked courses for its pre-service secondary-school mathematics teaching-certification students.

Many teaching certification students often question the relevance of upper-level undergraduate mathematics for their futures as middle school or high school mathematics teachers. These students are still in the midst of a transition from thinking like students to thinking like teachers, and so the value of the depth and breadth of their high school teachers' mathematical knowledge is not apparent to them. Many students think of high school mathematics as simply the most basic mathematics they have encountered in the last few years. To help overcome this perception and to begin to align these future teachers' understanding of mathematics and pedagogy with NCTM standards and other articulations of best practices for mathematics teaching and learning, IU came up with a strategy for creating links between undergraduate mathematics and grades 6-12 mathematics education.

A linked course is a one-credit, graded pass/fail course taken concurrently with an undergraduate mathematics course. The linked course is taught by a local practicing high school mathematics teacher and/or a mathematics educator from the IU School of Education. The instructors of the linked course consult with the instructors of the mathematics course to gain a sense of the syllabus of that course before designing the syllabus of the linked course. 

The primary objective of the linked course is to help students build conceptual and pedagogical linkages between the content of the mathematics course and the teaching of grades 6-12 mathematics. NCTM standards along with local curricular frameworks help frame discussions and work in the linked course that help students see a) how a deeper and broader understanding of mathematics will enhance their ability to develop all of their future students' mathematical understandings, b) how to design lesson plans for grades 6-12 that reflect a deeper engagement with the mathematical topics they contain, and c) facilitate the transition from thinking like a student to thinking like a teacher about the content of their undergraduate mathematics courses. The assignments used to meet these objectives are highly practical and generate materials that can be used by the students in preparing their professional teaching certification portfolios, and that can be used by them during student teaching. For example, lesson plans, reflections on field experiences in local grades 6-12 classrooms, and other written work responding to selected standards and other prompts, are all things that the students can make use of beyond the bounds of the linked course.

Linked courses have much in common with typical methods courses for future teachers; however, the important difference is that all the work is grounded thoroughly and carefully in the specific mathematics being learned in the linked mathematics course. This allows for a depth of topical exploration not possible in most methods courses needing to treat a more comprehensive syllabus.

Although it is ideal to take a linked course concurrently with the mathematics course, to allow for greater scheduling flexibility, enrollment in some linked courses is permitted after the mathematics course has been completed. For students taking the link after the mathematics course, this timing permits a review of the material, which is in itself a different kind of benefit.

Under the current MSP grant, IU is developing one or two new linked courses each semester as it builds up a set of at least four such links. Beginning in the fall of 2004, pre-service secondary school mathematics teachers will be required to take 3 linked courses prior to student teaching. These courses will be in addition to the two 3-credit math methods courses required, and in addition to all the required mathematics content courses.

Current plans are to develop linked courses for the following courses:

Calculus (link to be taken concurrently with 3rd semester multivariate calculus or after completion of the calculus sequence)
Geometry 
Probability and Statistics
Linear Algebra
See the syllabi for the course linked with Linear Algebra:  Fall 2004 Syllabus and Student Projects
Mathematical Modeling
See the syllabi for the course linked with Mathematical Modeling:  Fall 2003 Syllabus  |   Fall 2004 Syllabus

For additional information, see the paper given at the Joint 2005 Meeting of the AMS and MAA:
"Design and Implementation of Linking Courses: Connecting College Mathematics with High School Mathematics for Pre-service Teachers" by Paul Kehle, Dan Maki, and Andy Norton, Indiana University and Dale Nowlin, Columbus North High School., January 2, 2005.

Last updated: January 26, 2005
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~iucme/linkedcourses.html
Contact: Paul Kehle, Secondary Coordinator
E-mail: pkehle@indiana.edu