Mary Kay Stein

Mary Kay Stein
School of Education
University of Pittsburgh
5811 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
PHONE: 412-648-7116
EMAIL: mkstein@pitt.edu

• Overview
• Publications
• Presentations
• Professional Participation
• Consulting
• Grants and Research
• Projects
• Curriculum Vita

Full Time Faculty - Associate Director LRDC

School Affiliations

• Department: Administrative and Policy Studies
• Department: Dean's Office - Professor/Sr Scientist LRDC
• Department: Learning Policy Center
• Program: Cognitive Studies
• Program: Learning Sciences and Policy

Education

• Ph.D., Educational Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, 4/10/1986
• M.Ed., Counselor Education, University of Pittsburgh, 1976
• B.S., Rehabilitation Education, Penn State University, 1975

Recent Publications

Book Chapters

• Coburn, C.E., Honig, M. & Stein, M.K. (In Press). What is the evidence on districts’ use of evidence? In L. Gomez, J. Bransford, & D. Lam (Eds.), Research and practice: The state of the field. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.
• Stein, M.K., & Clare-Matsumura, L. (In press). Measuring instruction for teacher learning. In D. Gitomer (Ed.), Measurement issues and the assessment of teacher quality. New York: Sage.
• Resnick, L.B., Stein, M.K., & Coon, S.E. (In Press). Standards-based reform: A powerful idea unmoored. In R. Kahlenberg (Ed.), Going back to basics on standards-based reform. New York: The Century Foundation.
• Stein, M.K., Hubbard, L., & Toure, J. (In Press). Travel of district-wide approaches to instructional improvement: How can districts learn from one another? In A. Hargreaves (Ed.), International Handbook of Educational Change.

Journal Articles

• Stein, M.K., Engle, R.A., Smith, M.S., & Hughes, E.K. (In Press). Orchestrating productive mathematical discussions: Helping teachers learn to better incorporate student thinking. Mathematical Thinking and Learning.
• Smith, M.S., Hughes, E.K., Engle, R.A., & Stein, M.K. (In Press). Orchestrating discussions of challenging tasks: Keeping your eye on the mathematics to be learned. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School.
• Stein, M.K. & Coburn, C.E. (In Press). Architectures for learning: A comparative analysis of two urban districts. The American Journal of Education.

Manuscripts

• Kaufman, J., & Stein, M.K. Teaching learning opportunities in a shifting and uncertain policy environment for instruction. Education Policy.

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Recent Course Instruction

Spring 2009 (2094)

• EDUC 2595 - SPECIAL TOPICS - LSAP

Fall 2008 (2091)

• EDUC 3594 - LEARNING SCIENCES 1 - LSAP

Summer 2008 (2087)

• ADMPS 3098 - DIRECTED STUDY
• ADMPS 3099 - GUIDANCE IN THE DOCTORAL DEGREE

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Recent Presentations

• Examining the Relationship between Teacher Human Capital, Curriculum Use, and Quality of Implementation
  Stein, M.K., Kaufman, J., & Sutherland, S. (2008). Examining the relationship between teacher human capital, curriculum use, and quality of implementation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.
• Student Achievement in Districts Scaling Up Mathematics
  Yuan, K., Lockwood, J.R., Hamilton, L., Gill, B., & Stein, M.K. (2008). Student achievement in districts scaling up mathematics: As related to district policy, human and social capital, curriculum implementation, and instructional style. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.
• Teaching Learning Opportunities in a Shifting and Uncertain Policy Environment for Instruction
  Kaufman, J., & Stein, M.K. (2008). Teaching learning opportunities in a shifting and uncertain policy environment for instruction. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.
• Travel of District-Wide Approaches to Instructional Improvement: How Can Districts Learn from One Another?
  Stein, M.K., Hubbard, L., & Toure, J. (2008). Travel of district-wide approaches to instructional improvement: How can districts learn from one another? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.
• Education Policy from a Learning Perspective
  Stein, M.K., Russell, J., & Coon, S.E. (2008, March). Education policy from a learning perspective. Invited presentation at the annual meeting of the Educational Policy and Leadership Center. Harrisburg, PA.
• Role of Boundary Objects and Practices in District-Wide Reform
  Stein, M.K., & Coburn, C.E. (2007). Role of boundary objects and practices in district-wide reform. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the University Council for Educational Administration. Washington, DC.

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Current Professional Participation

• Journal of Educational Change
  • Editorial Board Member
• MacArthur Network on Teaching and Learning
  • Director of subgroup focused on directing case studies of nationally visible R&D projects
• National Science Foundation (NSF)
  • Served as advisor on an Early Career Grant to Sandra Crespo (Michigan State University)
• Riverview School District
  • School Board Member Chair, Education Committee
• The Gates Foundation
  • Served on Technical Advisory Group for the Chicago Comprehensive High School Evaluation
• University Council on Educational Administration (UCEA)
  • Discussant for a symposium sponsored by the Center for Teaching Policy, University of Washington

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Recent Consulting

• Temple University
  • Member, 3-person review team for the Center for Research on Human Development and Education (Kent McGuire, Director)
• WestEd
  • Member of Advisory Panel for "Math Pathways and Pitfalls" (Carne Barnett, PI)

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Recent Grants

• Measuring Classroom Discussion in Mathematics and Literacy, Internal LRDC Grant
• Investigating the Relationship between Research and Practice. Purpose: To investigate ways in which research and practice can be more productively knitted together by studying extant projects. Source: The MacArthur Foundation. Amount: $757,000.
• Scaling Up Mathematics: The Interface of Curricula with Human and Social Capital. Purpose: To investigate the role of curriculum in large-scale teacher improvement. Source: National Science Foundation. Amount: $6,000,000.

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Recent Projects

• The Meta Study
  THE META STUDY Mary Kay Stein, Principal Investigator Cynthia Coburn, Co-Principal Investigator Funded by the Spencer and MacArthur Foundations The Meta Study is a systematic examination of education R&D initiatives that have successfully developed educational innovations and brought them to scale. We seek to learn from these projects how they have re-organized the relationship between research and proactice in productive and mutally beneficial ways. The projects that we are studying include LeTUS (an inquiry science project), the Middle School Mathematics Application Project, Success for All, the Institute for Learning, QUASAR (a mathematics reform project), the partnership among Education Matters, the Boston Plan for Excellence, and the Boston Public Schools, the National Writing Project, and Lesson Study. Our goal is to move our understanding of the relationship between research and practice forward in three ways: First, by uncovering and making public new ways of combining research and practice, we expect to be able to contribute to their further development and improvement, as well as to make them learnable by others. Second, by analyzing and articulating the mechanisms by which these projects contribute to improvement, we expect to build on and extend conceptual understanding of the relationship between research and practice. Finally, by drawing on our findings, we expect to be able to make recommendations for specific changes in research and funding policy.
• Scaling Up Mathematics
  SCALING UP MATHEMATICS: THE INTERFACE OF CURRICULA WITH HUMAN AND SOCIAL CAPITAL Mary Kay Stein, Co-Principal Investigator School of Education and Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh Executive Summary The competitive demands of the global economy in the 21st century require greater levels of mathematical skills and understanding among our nation’s children than ever before (NRC, 2001). Despite a plethora of promising mathematics programs, none have “gone to scale” to produce learning gains across the board for all students and schools. When brought to scale, many promising programs—regardless of subject matter—founder or fail to penetrate the core of classroom instruction (see, e.g., Berends, Bodilly, and Kirby, 2002; Cuban 1993; Elmore, 1996; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). We believe that past approaches have failed because they are rooted—implicitly or explicitly—in overly simplistic ideas of what is required to take proven innovations to scale. We have developed a complex, theoretically driven model of the conditions necessary for successful scale-up of interventions. In our model, successful scale-up depends on the level of human and social capital fostered by districts and present in schools in interaction with the learning demands of the program being scaled. Our study seeks to understand: 1. How human and social capital within the school interact to affect the breadth, depth and endurance of curricular implementation; 2. How the characteristics of the curriculum intervention moderate the relationship between human and social capital and curricular implementation; 3. How district strategies influence the human and social capital in schools via the structure and organization of professional development opportunities and curriculum roll-out strategy; 4. How the breadth, depth and endurance of implementation of a research-based curriculum ultimately influence student achievement. To assess these questions, we examine the scale-up of two research-based elementary-level mathematics programs (Everyday Mathematics and Investigations) in two urban school districts. We use a quasi-experimental, nested, mixed method design to examine the conditions and factors that support and impede the successful large-scale implementation of promising programs as well as the changes in student achievement that ultimately result from implementation. The design leverages the multiple levels at which scale-up plays out (teacher, school, and district). The study is unique in its integration of several distinct theoretical frameworks, resulting in a rich and rigorous assimilation of three inter-related areas: a) The human and social capital requirements needed to enhance teacher learning and classroom implementation, b) the structure (specificity and integrality) of the new curricula, and the associated demands they place upon teachers, and c) the policy decisions of district leaders in facilitating and enabling implementation and persistence of the new curricula. We have assembled an interdisciplinary team of researchers to undertake the study at the University of Pittsburgh and RAND including scholars of cognitive psychology, educational sociology, organizational behavior, human resource management, statistics, and public policy. By examining the role of curriculum structure in relation to human and social capital, this study will begin to untangle the complex sets of processes that affect the potential of innovations to reach broadly, deeply, and be sustained over time. In so doing, it will offer guidance to policy makers concerned with providing districts and schools the strategies and resources needed to give teachers the personal skills, the social supports, and the curricula that will enhance their performance and ultimately promote the achievement of their students.

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