When middle school math teachers completed an online professional development program that uses artificial intelligence to improve their math knowledge and teaching skills, their students’ math performance improved.
My colleagues and I developed this online professional development program, which relies on a virtual facilitator that can – among other things – present problems to the teacher around teaching math and provide feedback on the teacher’s answers.
Our goal was to enhance teachers’ mastery of knowledge and skills required to teach math effectively. These include understanding why the mathematical rules and procedures taught in school work. The program also focuses on common struggles students have as they learn a particular math concept, and how to use instructional tools and strategies to help them overcome these struggles.
We then conducted an experiment in which 53 middle school math teachers were randomly assigned to either this AI-based professional development or no additional training. ...
