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Administrator interviews
 
County and school administrators described 
the Singapore Math as a curriculum that would 
not only improve student learning but would 
develop deeper mathematical skills in 
elementary teachers who were described as 
possessing stronger literacy skills than 
mathematical abilities. For county 
administrators, a consequence for an elementary 
educator who possessed greater confidence in 
the knowledge of mathematics would be an 
improved ability to deliver the content. 
Principals claimed that increased elementary 
teachers’ competence in mathematics and higher 
student achievement results were desirous in the 
medium- rather than short-term: 
For the students, we’ve got to have our 
teachers better educated and better math 
teachers. So that’s definitely a goal to have 
better math teachers and stronger math 
teachers. They need to become stronger 
math teachers, and they need to understand 
how to teach students to develop this level 
of thinking and problem solving. 
(Elementary Principal 1) 
County administrators claimed that over time the 
new mathematics curriculum would deepen 
educators’ content-knowledge, positively impact 
students’ critical thinking and problem solving 
skills, and foster the students’ interest and 
mathematical understanding beyond the primary 
years extending into middle and secondary 
schooling:
We want [teachers] to develop an 
understanding of how this process works on 
what numbers are and [students] know how 
to work with numbers. So that’s the goal: to 
develop the understanding. It takes more than 
just the teacher writing it on the board and 
the kids copying it on their paper. . . . What 
the very engaged classroom doesn’t 
necessarily mean is that the students are busy 
with the manipulatives all the time, but there 
needs to be a lot of interaction going on 
between the teacher and the students as far as 
[teachers] hearing that the students can 
process: “Did you get that answer?” or “Tell 
me, how did you arrive at that solution?” 
That sort of thing – good strong teacher 
instruction. (County Administrator 1)
According to interviewed school and 
county administrators, these skills were 
cultivated over years rather than months, with 
teachers actively engaged in the students’ 
discovery process of learning and cognitive 
development: 
The rigor part is not going to come 
overnight. It takes a while to adjust to a 
different computation style. We’re hoping 
down the road that this will make a big 
difference for our children as far as their 
critical thinking skills and higher-order 
thinking skills. You just can’t evaluate 
[those abilities] overnight. To me, the 
children have to develop that year-in and 
year-out. (Elementary Principal 2)
We want the children to think over and 
above what they’ve thought before, and this 
program offers that. We not only want 
them to problem solve in math but 
throughout their lives. We want them to 
have the skills they need to just think 
through things and start developing a 
pattern of “How do I deal with this 
problem?” and “How do I solve this 
problem?” (County Administrator 2) 
To successfully attain the interconnected 
goals of elevated teachers’ content-knowledge 
and increased students’ learning, administrators 
emphasized the importance of teacher training 
and continual county- and school-level support. 
Monitoring an effective and sustained 

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GATEways to Teacher Education 
A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators 
VOLUME 14, ISSUE 1 
PAGE 33 
implementation was determined through initial 
and succeeding teacher training workshops, 
installation of a county representative to address 
curriculum and pedagogical concerns, and 
regular classroom observations from school 
administrators. One principal stated that higher 
student expectations and improved tests results 
were contingent upon effective teaching “that 
we can sometimes control,” while student 
attitude toward the subject could not be 
influenced because it “sometimes originates 
from parents.“ Principals claimed that parent 
buy-in of the new curriculum depended upon 
student interest and academic success in 
mathematics. 
Based on classroom observations of and 
discussions with teachers and senior school staff, 
county administrators and principals claimed 
they were conscious of some of the difficulties 
and obstacles classroom teachers faced 
delivering the new curriculum. Some of the 
emergent challenges included differentiating the 
curriculum, responding to the needs of ELLs, 
modifying the Singapore Math assessment 
instruments, and developing teacher-training 
workshops. Principals recognized that classroom 
teachers were struggling to effectively integrate 
some math concepts and content-specific 
vocabulary as well as attaining master-level 
results in the assessment instruments. Principals 
described the challenges, on the one hand, of 
meeting adequate yearly progress and pressures 
preparing students for the high-stakes end-of-
year tests, with, on the other hand, a desire to 
cultivate student interest, learning, and critical 
thinking skills in mathematics.