This page contains the meeting materials for the partner stage of the AM-ME (adapted measure of math engagement) project. The essence of the partner stage is taking the time to build trusting relationships and appropriate collaboration structures with your research partners. You will notice that we intentionally offered individual onboarding meetings before convening our first large-group meeting. The idea for this is to ease students and teachers into this project. You will also notice that meetings for this stage did not just happen at the beginning of the project; rather, we regularly check in to ensure that everyone on the team feels valued and heard as the project evolves. Finally, you will notice that seldom is a meeting only about the partner stage, speaking to the fact that partner is a foundation for the other stages of CEnR (i.e., plan, implement, analyze, share), as opposed to a standalone stage.
Since partner is the very first stage of CEnR, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes; for example, getting school leaders’ buy-in, setting up contracts, checking budgets. You can find resources for those behind the scenes activities in the resource library: identify partners, secure project funding, and define roles, expectations, and engagement process. They go hand in hand with the meeting materials summarized on this page.
Helpful Tips
- It might be helpful to allocate more time for relationship-building during this stage.
- Be intentional about connecting with your research partners. For example, note down important details for each Research Group member (e.g., family commitments that have implications for scheduling, dietary restrictions and preferences).
- Getting to know new people can be intimidating, especially when there are presumed power dynamics (e.g., between teachers and students) in the room. One strategy is to intentionally break people into different configurations of small groups.
- Researchers are as part of the Research Group as the students and teachers are. You’ll notice that we not only facilitate but also participate in the team/relationship building activities ourselves.
- Some meetings happened during summer break when people were out of town, so we provided the option to join remotely for our in-person group meetings. However, consider the pros and cons for this since relationship building feels different online compared to in person.
- For in-person meetings, consider a location that is convenient for everyone. For us, this meant meeting in the school district office until all of our students were in high school. Then we switched to meeting in one of the teacher's classrooms.
- Some information, namely project goals and activities, were repeatedly presented in multiple meetings. This is because we found it easier for people to take in dense information when shown more than once.
- Relationship building takes time and can often feel more authentic outside of structured meetings! If budget allows, consider holding fun events (e.g., outings, happy hours) with your partners for the sole purpose of building relationships.
Individual onboarding meetings (June 2023)
This very first onboarding meeting focused on getting to know our student and teacher partners, providing a project overview, and getting the students’ and teachers’ insights on our research topic of interest (i.e., math engagement) through a casual interview.
Meeting length: 1 hour
- Facilitator Guide: Partner- Individual onboarding meetings (June 2023)
- Slides: Partner- Individual onboarding meetings (June 2023)
Group kick-off meetings (June 2023)
This kick-off meeting focused on team building, creating group norms, providing a project overview, and discussing our research topic of interest (i.e., math engagement) using our student and teacher partners’ interview responses from the individual onboarding meetings as data.
Meeting length: 2 hours
- Facilitator Guide: Partner- Group kick off meeting (June 2023)
- Slides: Partner- Group kick off meeting (June 2023)
- Activity: Partner - what is math engagement activity
- This meeting also covers the Plan stage of CEnR research because we asked the Research Group for their feedback on the research questions and project goals.
- This meeting also covers a little bit of the Analyze stage of CEnR research because we did a light-touch version of thematic analysis using interview responses from the Research Group’s individual onboarding meetings as data.
End of year individual check-in meetings (November 2023)
We did short, individual check-in meetings with each Research Group member to see how they were feeling about the project and gather any suggestions or questions they had. We wanted the meetings to be casual, so we intentionally did not record the meetings. We were still interested in capturing their responses to the check-in questions, so we took notes during the meetings.
Meeting length: 30 minutes
- Facilitator guide: Partner - End of year individual check in (November 2023)
End of year group reflection meetings (December 2023)
This meeting focused on team building, reflecting on the learnings and findings from year 1, brainstorming dissemination ideas, and planning for the upcoming data collection.
Meeting length: 2 hours
- Facilitator Guide: Partner- End of year group reflection meetings (December 2023)
- Slides: Partner- End of year group reflection meetings (December 2023)
- Activity: Letter Reflections Activity
- This meeting covers the Share stage of CEnR research because we broke into small groups to brainstorm ways that our project findings can instigate positive changes in the school district. The brainstorming activity directly built off work done by the dissemination small group from their sharing results small group sessions 1-2 (October and December 2023) meeting.
- This meeting also covers the Plan stage of CEnR research because we broke into small groups to brainstorm ways to increase response rate for our upcoming survey administration.
Researcher post work:
- Summarize each small group’s data collection plan and be ready to follow up with them during survey administration.
The Adapted Measure of Math Engagement Research Group includes six students (Antonio Chavira, Brianna Espy, Ryan Ombongi, Serrah Ssemukutu, Salma Ahmed, and Diamond Tony-Uduhirinwa), five teachers (Nathan W. Earley, Karina Mazurek, Kathleen Morgan, Karla Rokke, and Ashly Tritch), and five researchers (Marisa Crowder, Samantha E. Holquist, Diane (Ta-Yang) Hsieh, Claire Kelley, and Mark Vincent B. Yu). Researchers Alyssa Scott, Olivia Reyes, and Avalloy McCarthy also extensively contributed to this work. Bloomington Public School District leaders Betsy Hawes, Marcie Coval, Julio Caesar, and Rik Lamm provided support to this work. Jennifer Widstrand served as the project manager.
If you have questions about the Adapted Measures of Math Engagement project, please contact Principal Investigator Samatha E. Holquist at sholquist@childtrends.org.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, grant #2200437. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.