The University of Delaware mathematics education group, along with the Delaware State Department of Education, is a partner with the University of Maryland and the Pennsylvania State University in the Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning. The Center is the latest in a series of collaborative ventures between mathematics educators at the University of Delaware and the Delaware State Department of Education.

The Center, one of the first two awarded by the National Science Foundation in Fall 2000 and the only Center to receive a five-year renewal (through 2010), is funded to re-build the infrastructure of mathematics education in this country by preparing its next generation of leaders and to pursue a collaborative research agenda on the development of knowledge for teaching mathematics. The Center coordinates joint doctoral program activities among the three universities and supports the research and development of model programs in mathematics teacher preparation and professional development.

The Delaware site is focusing on the mathematics preparation of teachers. Center fellows teach one section of a mathematics course and participate, with colleagues teaching the same course, in a process of course improvement. This involves planning lessons together, soliciting feedback on lesson effectiveness, and using the information to steadily improve lessons over time. Most fellows work with the same course for successive semesters to allow the development of meaningful research and teaching improvement opportunities.

Consistent with the Center's emphasis on developing national leaders in mathematics education, the fellows' work on improving the mathematics preparation of teachers is supported by a variety of experiences, including weekly research seminars and weekly planning sessions and discussions with course instructors on improving teaching through data collection and analysis. Center fellows play central roles in achieving the Delaware goal of building a prototype program in mathematics teacher preparation that is designed to continuously improve over time.