Math experts expanding Responsive Math Teaching Project to new areas

After six years of pioneering an innovative math instructional leadership and professional development program, Penn GSE’s Caroline Ebby, Joy Anderson Davis, and the RMT team are scaling their work nationwide, launching new strategic partnerships, and co-authoring an upcoming book.

The Responsive Math Teaching Project (RMT) team comprises a group of veteran math educators, researchers, and doctoral students, including Ebby, Anderson Davis, Jennifer Valerio, Lindsay Goldsmith-Markey, Brittany Hess, and Lizzy Pecora, who share a mission to transform math education. RMT promotes teaching methods that respond to students' needs in real-time based on what they know and prioritizes ongoing teacher development and support.

“This idea of RMT is to meet students where they are, which is very powerful and central to the approach around problem-solving; it requires listening to students and being sensitive to tools in their tool belt to approach robust problem solving,” noted Anderson Davis, a senior instructional math coach.

RMT’s approach to professional training has three stages. First, teachers experience responsive math instruction as learners, and then they learn new responsive strategies and instructional practices. Finally, they learn to facilitate professional development on responsive math teaching for other teachers in their schools.

In the initial planning phase of the project, Ebby explained, “We discovered an urgent need to build math instructional leadership in elementary schools.”

Since its launch, more than 300 teachers have gone through the program’s training and brought the approach to more than 14 School District of Philadelphia (SDP) K–8 schools. Additionally, RMT has trained 13 teacher leaders, and several have gone on to school or district leadership positions.

RMT started with a planning grant from the William Penn Foundation in 2016 and then expanded in the fall of 2018 with a $2.9 million National Science Foundation grant, which ended in June 2024.

As their NSF funding is winding down, the team is focused on expanding access to RMT through new outlets. The “official” work is over, but RMT lives on.

To start, the RMT team is collaborating on an upcoming book, Becoming a Responsive Math Teacher, which Routledge plans to publish in July 2025. The book will help teachers nationwide understand and implement responsive math instructional practices.

“The book is a manual based on what we’ve learned from working with teachers who are trying to change their instructional practice in often challenging contexts — under-resourced schools without many opportunities for ongoing professional development,” explained Ebby.

As RMT evolves, Ebby is transitioning into a new role at Penn GSE. She was recently appointed a senior lecturer in the Learning, Teaching, and Literacies Division and will also continue in her role as a senior researcher at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. She hopes to build on the work of RMT to develop a credentialing program for elementary mathematics teacher leaders, providing a much-needed pathway for professional growth.

In addition to their book, the team is forging new partnerships. Leveraging RMT’s research, they are designing new resources for math educators, teacher leaders, and tutors .

RMT’s flexibility is being tested in SDP schools. The district is rolling out a new math curriculum, and RMT staff are helping math educators apply their RMT training to help implement the new program. Ebby says this is an example of RMT’s range and adaptability.

“Any curriculum, no matter how good it is, wasn’t written for the kids in your classroom, not in a way that will meet the needs of your students unless as a teacher you know how to elicit and respond to their thinking,” Ebby said. “We’re about being responsive to the kids you have.”

RMT Research Specialist Brittany Hess, a Penn GSE alum, is continuing to collaborate with long-time partners Henry C. Lea and Penn Alexander Elementary schools  to enhance math instruction through professional development and school-based support. Ebby, Hess, and Jennifer Valerio are working to bring the RMT approach to preservice teachers through mathematics methods courses in GSE’s UTAP and UTR programs.

To broaden RMT's reach, Tim Foxx, director of Penn GSE’s Center for School Study Councils, is working with Davis to share RMT’s approach and methods with school leaders in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Southern California.

Above all, the RMT team wants to bring RMT’s magic to even more students and math educators.

“This idea of meeting students where they are is very powerful,” Anderson Davis said.