In the broadest sense, learning progressions describe how students’ learning typically develops across and within domains of mathematics. In this way, learning progressions can help teachers to understand the learning experiences that could support individual and groups of students in making progress towards standards based on their current knowledge and skills. Definite research in many areas are still not fully established, so educators and policy makers must make do with the best information and resources available.
The Common Core State Standards describe College and Career Readiness standards for students across grade levels. To further illuminate these math standards, a series of Progressions documents have been developed to provide information about “key connections among standards, point out cognitive difficulties and pedagogical solutions, and give more detail on particularly knotty areas of the mathematics” (p.4, front matter).
The Progressions for the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics provides additional guidance for teachers by providing sample tasks to illustrate individual standards, and how students’ understanding of the standards might develop over time. The authors also provide key mathematical content background for the teachers.