Research-Based, Research-Proven Solutions
Pathways resources are based on decades of mathematics education research, including understanding (i) what ideas and meanings most critical for students’ success in calculus and STEM fields, (ii) how students learn mathematics, both in general and relative to specific mathematical ideas, (iii) how to create educative curriculum materials that support instructors’ ongoing learning alongside students’ learning, (iv) the conditions that influence teachers’ beliefs, practices, and mathematical meanings, and (v) how to design and implement professional development to support positive shifts in teachers’ beliefs, practices, and mathematical meanings. The result is a coherent, effective approach to teaching and learning mathematics.
Pathways curricula for in-person courses consist of a consumable student workbook with daily lesson investigations and homework tasks, online support in the form of lessons, repeatable practice, and videos, instructor supports including detailed instructor notes and solutions, dynamic applets to support high-quality classroom discussions, PowerPoints linked to each workbook investigation, and assessment item banks.
Since 2006, Pathways resources have undergone continual updating and refinement based on student performance data, instructor feedback, and the results of ongoing research on the meanings students and teachers construct while using the materials.
Pathways In-Person Curricula
We offer an array of curriculum options for both college/university courses and high school courses. All of our curricula are research-based and designed to support students in developing deep understandings of important mathematical ideas as well as nurturing teachers’ ongoing learning with professional development training and instructional support tools.
College/University Courses
Learn more about Pathways curriculum options for in-person college and university courses.
High School Courses
Learn more about Pathways curriculum options for in-person high school courses.
Customized Printings
Learn more about options to create customized resources for your specific needs.
Pathways In-Person Course Resources
Student Workbooks
Each Pathways in-person course includes a consumable hybrid textbook and student workbook with daily lesson investigations and homework. The lesson investigations contain engaging contexts and cognitively scaffolded questions supporting a student-centered approach to learning. This scaffolding supports multiple entry points into lesson tasks, promotes students in gaining confidence, facilitates productive mathematical reasoning habits, and encourages each student to make their understandings public, allowing instructors to collect evidence about students’ emerging meanings and respond appropriately. Pathways materials emphasize coherence across lessons and units and have a proven track record of success.
Online Supplementary Resources
Each workbook investigation includes accompanying online resources that can be used as supplemental practice, make-up work for students who miss class, enrichment activities, or to facilitate flipped-classroom models. The online resources include cognitively scaffolded interactive lessons that encourage students to take an active role in constructing mathematical meanings, interactive applets that help students visualize and make sense of mathematical relationships, supplemental homework and repeatable practice, as well as quizzes and assessments to provide instant feedback on students’ progress.
Instructor Supports
Every Pathways course includes a variety of resources to help instructors facilitate meaningful, engaging lessons. In addition to solutions for every lesson investigation and homework set, we have detailed notes describing our mathematical learning goals for students, common ways of thinking students will exhibit, potential stumbling blocks, advice for lesson implementation, and more. We also provide dynamic applets with associated questions and activities to help students visualize mathematical relationships and to drive productive classroom exploration and discussion.
Professional Development
We fully support all teachers and instructors using Pathways curriculum materials with expert, focused professional development training included with every adoption. This professional development training is led by members of the Pathways development team and focuses on making sense of the curriculum’s research-informed mathematical learning goals, understanding how to implement the lesson investigations for maximum effectiveness, and learning how to navigate instructor supports. We also support long-term departmental growth by partnering with course coordinators to facilitate ongoing training and instructor development for as long as a site uses Pathways resources.
User Testimonials
“Before this class I thought math was just about memorizing rules. This is the first time I’ve been able to understand the word problems. This class is making me a better thinker in all my classes. I now expect ideas to make sense and know that I am smart enough to figure things out instead of waiting for teachers to tell me what to do.” – Pathways Student
“I really liked the investigations we did during class. The questions kept me learning and engaged. When the teacher lectured I was able to understand. I also got more and more comfortable in explaining my solutions and liked seeing mathematics from different viewpoints.” – Pathways Student
“Teaching with Pathways I came to the realization that it is not my job in the classroom to teach students to think the way I’m thinking. Rather, it is my job to help students learn how to do mathematics in their own way—using structured activities that are providing content, but at the same time are providing leeway for them to make their own meaning from the material.” – Pathways Instructor
“The pathways materials provide an instructor an opportunity to teach in ways that ask students to think about a mathematical concept, to form their own understandings of it, and express those understandings to themselves and others. And then, the instructor can take those understandings and use the students’ expressions of their understandings as a way to advance the lesson towards a particular mathematical goal. You have to modify traditional textbook lessons in order to do that. So for me, it’s more work to try to teach with a traditional book because I have to somehow figure out how I’m going to modify it to help get the students ideas on the table.” – Pathways Instructor and Precalculus Course Coordinator
“The TAs teaching the courses would kind of catch that spark and get enthusiastic about this different way of teaching things and some of them relayed to me afterwards that it completely changed the way they thought about teaching. They would never go back to teaching these ideas in like they used to.” – Precalculus course coordinator
“The Pathways materials revolutionized the way I think about teaching. In the past there were so many things that I just had not thought about, you know? When looking at exponential functions or trigonometric functions, I realized when I was teaching out of Pathways that there was just an awful lot that I had never really thought about. I just accepted procedure-based approaches and just used them, and had never really given a lot of thought about, “Okay, I can prove that these things work, but why should they work? What’s the motivation behind the way we define the sine function? Or what’s the motivation behind the differences between exponential growth and linear growth?” And it’s just, it was a real revolution to me, and kind of humbling, too.” – Pathways Instructor