Developing Mathematical Ideas (DMI) is a professional development curriculum designed to help teachers think through the major ideas of elementary and middle-school mathematics and examine how students develop those ideas. At the heart of the materials are sets of classroom episodes (cases) illustrating student thinking as described by their teachers. In addition to case discussions, the curriculum offers teachers opportunities: to explore mathematics in lessons led by facilitators; to share and discuss the work of their own students; to view and discuss DVD clips of mathematics classrooms; to write their own classroom cases; to analyze lessons taken from innovative elementary mathematics curricula; and to read overviews of related research.
DMI seminars are designed to bring together teachers from Kindergarten through middle school to:
- Learn mathematics content
- Learn to recognize key mathematical ideas with which their students are grappling
- Learn to support the power and complexity of student thinking
- Learn how core mathematical ideas develop across the grades
- Learn how to continue learning about children and mathematics