The TEAM Center advances the design, study, and implementation of equitable and ambitious mathematics teaching. By bringing together researchers, math teacher educators, professional learning leaders, and classroom teachers, we create lasting structures that improve mathematics education for all students.
Although many schools aspire to equitable and ambitious mathematics instruction, achieving it and sustaining it over time remains a significant challenge. High-quality curriculum and professional learning are essential, but they are rarely sufficient on their own. Teachers’ practice develops within a complex system that includes curriculum, professional learning, school contexts, leadership, and ongoing reflection with students.
Through long-term partnerships with schools and teachers, the TEAM Center studies how these systems can be designed to nurture and sustain equitable and ambitious mathematics instruction, the conditions that support it, and the impact it has on teachers and students. Our goal is not only to improve mathematics teaching and learning, but also to build the evidence and practical tools needed to help more schools make equitable and ambitious mathematics teaching a sustainable reality.
Ambitious Mathematics Teaching is a vision for mathematics teaching derived from progressive educators who envisioned schools as places in which students could engage in inquiry. Over the past two decades, the term has come to describe instructional approaches that prioritize conceptual understanding, student reasoning, and equitable participation in authentic mathematical work. Ambitious mathematics teaching seeks to support all students in not only learning mathematics, but also using mathematical knowledge to solve problems that are authentic to students. Ambitious mathematics instruction that is also equitable attends to how power, status, and opportunities to participate are distributed within the classroom so that all students, especially those disenfranchised by traditional mathematics instruction, have meaningful opportunities to engage and be viewed as mathematical thinkers.
The TEAM Center is a collaboration between two organizations with a shared goal of increasing equitable and ambitious mathematics instruction in secondary schools.
TEAM Research Practice Partnerships bring researchers and educators together to pursue locally meaningful goals for ambitious and equitable mathematics instruction. The newly founded TEAM Center is building Research Practice Partnerships with middle and high schools interested in strengthening mathematics teaching and learning. Rather than arriving with a predetermined program, TEAM will work alongside teachers to […]
A year-long collaboration is helping high school teachers design assessments that offer a richer view of students’ mathematical reasoning and problem-solving. This fall, TEAM began a year-long assessment initiative with approximately 30 teachers from a medium-sized school district serving several high schools. The work starts from a simple but consequential idea: teachers can learn only […]
Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and CPM Educational Program are proud to announce the launch of the Teaching Equitable and Ambitious Mathematics (TEAM) Center, a new partnership dedicated to transforming mathematics teaching and learning through research, professional learning, and community engagement. The Center officially launched on October 1, 2026. Founded by […]