Leadership for Change: Supporting and Developing Teacher Leaders in Mathematics
Renaissance K-12[1]
Cathy Carroll
WestEd, Mathematics Renaissance K-12
Judy Mumme
WestEd, Videocases for Mathematics Professional Development
Introduction and Background
For the last ten years we have been working together on large-scale
professional development efforts in the State of California. The purpose of
this essay is to share some of our thinking about our work related to one of
those projects, Mathematics Renaissance K-12, in the hopes that it may provide
assistance to others.
We both came to Mathematics Renaissance K-12 (MRK-12) with extensive
professional development experience, yet nothing had quite prepared us for the
challenges we faced. Both of us have roots as mathematics classroom teachers.
Cathy Carroll is Co-PI for Leadership Curriculum for Mathematics Professional
Development. Prior to this she was Director for Mathematics Renaissance
Leadership Alliance, Associate Director for MRK-12, and Regional Director for
the Middle Grades Mathematics Renaissance. Judy Mumme is PI for Leadership
Curriculum for Mathematics Professional Development, Co-PI for Videocases for
Mathematics Professional Development and Co-PI for MRK-12 and she also served
as MRK-12’s Director for its first 3 years. She was previously Project Director
of the Middle Grades Mathematics Renaissance.
Mathematics Renaissance K-12 (MRK-12) involved more than 30 districts (176
schools, 3481 teachers) in a five-year Local Systemic Change (LSC) Initiative
across the State of California. Initiated in 1996, the project provided a
comprehensive professional development program designed to enable teachers K-12
to provide a coherent, articulated program of mathematics instruction. In
addition to its NSF support, MRK-12 received funding from the California
Department of Education (Eisenhower Program) as well as district contributions.
Eight full-time Regional Directors, a full-time Project Director, an Associate
Director and two part-time co-PIs staffed the project.
MRK-12 grew out of the Middle Grades Mathematics Renaissance, a major
professional development component of California’s State Systemic Initiative
(SSI). The Middle Grades Renaissance, and the strategies it employed, were
identified by many as highly successful (Sparks and Hirsh 1997; Eisenhower
National Clearinghouse 1998;
Loucks-Horsley, Hewson et al.
1998; Killion 1999), reaching over 50% of California’s
middle schools during its five years. Meeting the needs of the large numbers of
teachers with a full-time staff of 11 was not feasible. From the outset, we
utilized teacher leaders extensively to provide more in-depth, quality time
with teachers. Most of these teacher leaders were from schools outside of the
Renaissance. To carry out this work we found ourselves needing to grow
strategies for not only supporting teachers in change, but for nurturing and
supporting the teacher leaders as well.
Unlike the Middle Grades Renaissance, MRK-12 was designed to encompass the full
K-12 spectrum. Our earlier work, which focused on the middle grades, often
caused us to bump into roadblocks thrown up by the feeder/receiver elementary
and high schools. Changing the mathematics program at middle grades created new
pressures on other grade levels and often they balked at things unfamiliar. So
MRK-12 created vertical slice networks composed of a high school and its feeder
middle and elementary schools. Each network was expected to participate in the
project for three years, although some continued for a fourth year. Our goal
was to develop K-12, district-based learning communities of mathematically
powerful teachers who understand how students learn mathematics and know how to
help students deepen and expand their mathematical understandings across the
years. The ultimate aim was to enable all students to develop
mathematical power, so that they possess understanding of important
mathematical ideas, use mathematics to accomplish relevant purposes,
communicate their thinking to others, possess confidence in their mathematical
knowledge, and are disposed to use mathematics in their lives.
Two overlapping components were established in the MRK-12 approach—(1) work
directly with teachers and administrators to provide a coherent program of
professional development and (2) develop district leadership capacity to
do this work absent our support. There were important reasons for this dual
approach. First, although we knew from our experience in the Middle Grades
Mathematics Renaissance that real change takes time, we also needed to
demonstrate that there were immediate benefits from participating in
professional development. For this reason, we initiated efforts with all
mathematics teachers from the onset. Second, developing district capacity was
paramount in this new effort. The fact that teacher leaders in the Middle
Grades Renaissance were mostly from outside participating districts left many
schools without the internal capacity to continue efforts once the project
ended. Rectifying this problem became important to MRK-12.
We believe that professional development needs to be an ongoing part of the
fabric of teachers’ professional lives and if professional development is seen
as something connected only to a project, it has little hope of impacting
teachers’ practice. In this essay, we focus on the building capacity component,
that is, developing leadership for professional development. Enacting this
component presented considerable challenges and rewarded us with great new
learnings about mathematics professional development.
MRK-12 Leadership Development
In each vertical slice a cadre of teacher leaders was identified. Typically,
each school identified a teacher leader (TL), with the district identifying one
of the TLs as the team leader. As a team, this group worked with the regional
director to develop and implement plans for the work in the district. Although
we suggested selection criteria for teacher leaders, we relied on the schools
to actually make the choice. This produced leadership teams with a wide range
of backgrounds and teaching experiences. Few had experience working in
leadership roles, and for those who did, it was often the case that their only
experience had primarily been in "make and take" professional
development situations.
The goals of MRK-12 demanded a broader view of leadership than the traditional
model of workshop leader. Developing and strengthening leadership required
paying attention to three distinct yet interdependent aspects of work. We
identified these as our "Leadership Strands" which are grounded in
classroom work, work with colleagues, and work with administrators and the
school’s community. Our focus for the development of leadership included:
-
Teacher Leader as Visionary – Supporting teacher leaders in building a
knowledge, understanding and personal vision of mathematics, mathematics
teaching, and student and teacher learning of mathematics and professional
development;
-
Teacher Leader as Professional Developer - Developing/supporting the
ability of teacher leaders to design and facilitate professional development
that helps teachers build understanding of and improved practice around MRK-12
core learnings;
-
Teacher Leader as Communicator and Builder of Support -
Developing/supporting the ability of the teacher leaders to communicate and
build support for improving mathematics education.
Teacher Leader as Visionary
The new vision for mathematics education[3] requires
new kinds of professional development practices, unfamiliar to most teachers.
Central to this is knowledge of mathematics, how that mathematics plays out
across the grades, what it looks like in classrooms, how children come to
understand it—in other words, TLs need their own personal vision for
mathematics education and the passion for having children experience it. This
vision is central to being effective leaders.
Possessing such a vision is necessary, but not sufficient. Teacher leaders need
to know specific mathematics, understand issues of adult learning, know how to
establish a professional environment for learning, and possess the skills and
sensibilities to design and facilitate thoughtful, goal-oriented professional
development. Not all teachers come to their new leadership roles prepared to do
this. Many see facilitating professional development differently than they see
teaching children—they don’t perceive their role in professional development as
“teaching” (Russell and Schifter 1998). Teacher leaders often feel awkward in
this role of “teaching teachers.” They can come to see, however, that it isn’t
that they are necessarily expected to know more than their colleagues do, but
that they have carefully designed strategies for getting their colleagues to
engage with mathematical ideas. Studies have revealed that mathematics often
gets negotiated away in professional development. This is especially true when
teachers are working with teachers (Wilson and Berne, 1999). There is a culture
of politeness—not wanting to embarrass anyone—or not digging too deep. This may
be the result of the leader’s own insecurity with the mathematics or their
unclear goals for participants’ learning. Teacher leaders (and leaders in
general) face difficult issues in taking on this role, which points to the need
for support in building the skills and sensibilities required in this work.
In an attempt to address these issues in their leadership development, TLs
participated as learners in mathematics professional development experiences.
These experiences were developed from a variety of sources including
Structured Explorations (Kelemanik and Janssen, 1997) and other
resource books as well as several of the NSF-funded curriculum materials for
grades K-12. There were two purposes for this: 1) to help them build a robust
understanding of mathematics and mathematics education; and 2) to shape
expectations for professional development. To support their own mathematical
development, TLs engaged in mathematics experiences, then analyzed these
experiences from their perspectives as learners, answering questions such as,
What was the mathematics you used to solve this problem? Where did you get
stuck and how did you get “unstuck”? What was it like to be in the position of
learner? A second round of analysis of these same experiences was through a
“leadership lens.” This gave TLs an opportunity to build understanding of
leadership issues specific to mathematics education including teacher learning,
such as, What kinds of questions and support seemed to be helpful? How did the
facilitator deal with the diversity of the group? How is this similar
to/different from working with children?
Teacher Leader as Professional Developer
Providing professional development experiences for their colleagues was a major
component of the work of TLs from the outset. There are those who believe that
before one begins to act in a leadership role he/she must first demonstrate a
mastery of the “whole picture” of reform. We chose to take a different
approach. We believe that having TLs learn to lead absent opportunities to
apply their learning in a leadership capacity is like having students learn
strategies for solving math problems, but never letting them actually do
mathematics. Opportunities to lead are an essential component of leadership
development. We found that TLs strengthened their understanding of mathematics
and mathematics education in the process of leading. How often has one heard in
teaching, “I didn’t really understand it until I had to teach it”? Well, the
same is true in professional development—teaching teachers.
Some of our leadership development efforts focused on helping TLs understand and
engage in the process of designing a coherent, goal-oriented professional
development program. A particularly useful resource in this arena was
Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics
(Susan Loucks-Horsley et al, 1998). In statewide summer institutes and during
local leadership team meetings, TLs had opportunities to look deeply at their
own districts and schools, to consider the important features of their own
context and the critical issues within their districts, and to explore the
knowledge and beliefs of their teachers.
In addition to thinking about a comprehensive plan for the professional
development program, we also spent considerable time on what it takes to
design, plan, and facilitate specific sessions. We contend that the nature of
facilitation affords very different opportunities for learning. It takes
thoughtful planning to provide teachers the opportunity to encounter important
mathematical ideas and help them connect these to practice. The work of a
professional development leader involves: identifying learning goals;
creating/selecting a task that allows teachers to encounter important
mathematics; examining the mathematical entailments of the task and determining
what mathematics to emphasize and for what purpose; anticipating responses
(including possible misunderstandings); deciding how to group people; figuring
out how to gain everyone’s participation and have their ideas respected;
deciding how and when to insert new language; deciding what questions to ask
and when; deciding how to figure out what teachers are learning and how to
gather feedback; and determining when to summarize. Leaders also need to
understand how the various components of a professional development session
build toward learning goals and recognize the importance of focusing
facilitation toward these goals.
TLs had a variety of opportunities for learning. For example, in a summer
institute, TLs participated in a professional development experience first as a
learner and then they were asked to “take a step back” and reflect. They
analyzed the experience in terms of the clarity of the learning goals, the
quality/effectiveness of the task, etc. and talked with the facilitator about
her thinking as she designed the session. In other sessions, TLs worked with
several sets of written plans for sessions, analyzing and redesigning them in
light of various goals. These activities situated TLs to be better prepared to
understand design issues in their own settings. Based on these experiences they
worked together to design their long-term plans.
How professional development is facilitated makes a huge difference in teachers’
opportunities to learn. With this in mind, we worked with TLs to understand the
role of the facilitator in helping adult learners achieve the learning goals of
a session and to increase their capacity to work effectively with adult,
sometimes resistant, learners. A strategy we found particularly useful here is
the analysis of short video clips of professional development sessions. Cohen
and Ball (1999) propose that, “to learn anything relevant to performance,
professionals need experience with the tasks and ways of thinking that are
fundamental to the practice. Those experiences must be immediate enough to be
compelling and vivid. To learn more than mere imitation or survival, such
experiences also must be sufficiently distanced to be open to careful scrutiny,
unpacking, reconstruction, and the like.” While it would be difficult for TLs
to be objective when viewing their own practice or that of a colleague,
studying videos of others provided these “compelling” yet “distanced”
experiences. Another advantage of video was that it could be viewed multiple
times, allowing for analysis of various aspects of the session through a
variety of lenses.
In addition, teacher leaders learned about gathering data to inform their long-
and short-term planning and to assess the overall effectiveness of their design
and their facilitation as well as the impact on participants. Our intent was to
have them collect evidence of impact that reflects their goals, then to use
this evidence to help in deciding on what to do next and to examine the
coherence of the work. At one institute, rather than project staff providing a
written reflection for TLs to respond to, we asked them to write down one or
two questions they felt would “get at” the learning of the participants, then
provide their own responses to the questions they had written. As a follow-up
to this, TLs reviewed the full collection of questions and analyzed them in
light of the kind of information they provided.
Teacher Leader as Communicator and Builder of Support
Critical to the accomplishment of reform is broad-based support for the changes
that are being called for. Teacher leaders need to build support with
colleagues, administrators, parents and community members. Our work with the
teacher leaders in this area was designed to help them develop clarity of
vision, strategies to build support among different constituencies, and action
plans to guide their building support efforts.
Specific skill development in creating effective communication included:
-
using information about audience, context, purposes
-
managing mindsets by making your own message explicit to others and by helping
others to reveal theirs
-
advocating ideas using concrete data, explaining impact, and inquiring into
others’ perspectives.
In order to develop the skills needed in this area, TLs were engaged in a
variety of experiences. In an early summer institute, TLs looked in depth at
the idea of mindsets. This was done through reading and engaging in a case
discussion fromCasebook on School Reform
(Miller and Kantrov, 1998). TLs identified possible mindsets for several
of the characters, then worked through ideas for how they might most
effectively communicate with them. In a later summer institute, TLs were asked
to identify specific areas for which they needed to garner support, and then
work on how they could build consensus and/or use a persuasive argument to
garner that support. As a means for developing these skills, we again found the
case discussion approach useful, this time selecting a case from
Teacher Leadership in Mathematics and Science (Miller, et al, 2000).
In our final year, we continued with case-based work focused on what it means
to make a clear assertion, using concrete data, to invite the support of a
variety of constituencies.
Self-Similarity of Teaching, Professional Development, and Leadership Development
Early in the project we were working with a group of teacher leaders with the
intent of analyzing professional development facilitation issues. We looked at
a video of teachers discussing a written case from an 8th grade
classroom. The ensuing discussion became very messy and confused. When we
talked about the teacher, were we talking about the teacher in the case or the
teacher in the professional development session? When we were talking about the
content, was it the math content of the case or the math that the teachers were
engaging? We needed a better way of orienting the conversation, of locating
where we were pointing. Some work with Deborah Ball helped us think about how
to deal with these confusions. She had developed a set of diagrams related to
instruction and professional development, which we adapted to fit our needs. We
believe these are helpful in orienting our discussions around teaching and
professional development.[4]
The diagram begins with a representation of the relationships involved in
teaching students -- the relationship between teacher and students, student and
student(s), students and content, and teacher and content. (see figure 1) This
dynamic relationship is one that includes the teacher knowing the content, not
just the specific content of a lesson, but a deeper understanding of where that
content resides in the curriculum, what is important for students to know, and
how students come to learn it. The teacher also needs to know about her
students in particular and about student thinking and learning in general. She
needs to know how students learn the content -- how she brings the student and
the content together to create a learning environment. Teaching occurs in a
particular context, and teaching involves understanding the complexities of how
the context interacts with the goals for learning the content. This
characterization of teaching is complex, messy and uncertain (McDonald 1992;
Wassermann 1993; Wassermann 1994).
When we consider professional development (see figure 2), we bump the
relationships out a level, this time the content becomes the work of teaching,
the student is the teacher as a learner, and the teacher is the teacher leader.
These relationships have a fractal quality, i.e. they are self-similar.
[6] Here the teacher leader needs to know the content—the content being
teaching and the complex relationships that teaching entails. The teacher
leader also needs to know about the learner—this time, teachers. They need to
know how adults learn and what will help them learn the content (teaching). The
teacher developer needs to understand her role in facilitating learning
(teaching teachers). Notice how the language gets all entangled and confused?
We find the diagram a helpful way to disentangle the language.
We can bump this out still another level to consider leadership development.
(see figure 3) This time the content is professional development and the
learner is the teacher leader. The knowledge that is required of the teacher
(leader of leaders) is even more complex, involving knowledge of the work of
teaching, of professional development, as well as of teacher leadership. The
set of relationships could get bumped out again, but it raises the question as
to who then is the teacher?
We find these diagrams useful as a sort of "map of the mall" (you are
here). Often in the past we found TLs taking our intended "leadership
development" and thinking of it in terms of their own classrooms rather
than as leaders of professional development. The diagrams can help to say,
"we're looking here in this second circle at your role as leaders."
This has proved incredibly helpful in our work.
Thinking about our role in supporting the development of teacher leaders in
terms of teaching has proven very useful. We wish we had had, from the onset,
what we have now evolved—a comprehensive leadership framework and a curriculum
that supports it. This has led us to design our work much more purposefully and
has led us to many new learnings.
Reflecting on Our Learning
As the leadership work of MRK-12 drew to a close, we found ourselves at a point
where we could stand back and reflect on what we had learned and what we might
do differently. What follows is a brief summary of some of those reflections.
Leadership development is complex
Most of the teacher leaders with whom we worked shied away from the label of
“leader” at the outset. For many this conjured up an image of a “stand and
deliver” workshop leader, and they didn’t feel it applied to them. While we
knew from the start that our definition of leadership was more
multi-dimensional than that, it took us some time to fully define what we did
mean. Having chosen to focus on three particular leadership strands, we believe
that developing a framework to identify our learning goals provided an
important focus for our work.
Diversity and equity issues continue to be a challenge
In keeping with our goal of having all students develop mathematical power, we
wanted to keep equity central to our work. As a staff we had participated in
the Equity in Mathematics Education Leadership Institute (EMELI) for two years.
While we were able to use some of the EMELI structures in our work, we were not
able to dig as deeply into equity issues as we would have liked. While most of
our schools had large populations of students of color, we were not successful
in representing that diversity in our teacher leader teams.
Time is a precious commodity
We worked with teacher leaders for six full days during each school year and a
3-day residential institute each summer. In planning for the school year work,
there was often a tension between time spent in our own work with leadership
development and time spent helping TLs plan for their professional development
work. While we knew the importance of developing their leadership capacity,
there was also the reality that there was usually another professional
development event coming up for them soon. Even during summer institutes where
the immediacy of planning was absent, we often found that we had more that we
would like to do than we had time to do it.
Time was also a concern for teacher leaders at their schools and districts. For
a variety of reasons, they found it challenging to get time to provide
professional development opportunities for their colleagues. The number of
pupil-free days had been drastically reduced and, due to a serious shortage of
substitutes, release time for teachers was not available. This meant that much
of the work needed to be done after school or on Saturdays.
Summary
If asked the question, “Would you do it all again?” the answer would be an
unequivocal “Yes!” The experience of working with this group of TLs and seeing
them grow in confidence and capacity has been most rewarding. If we go a step
farther, though, and ask if there are things we would change, the answer is
also a definite “Yes!” Throughout the five years of MRK-12, we consistently
took stock of our progress and made the corrections and refinements we felt
would strengthen the program.
The fact that a large percentage of our teacher leaders had minimal prior
experience with the mathematics reforms was a critical factor in how we thought
about our work. We soon discovered that the work was challenging even for those
with extensive experience. It is difficult to lead professional development
where people are expected to dig deeply into mathematics and mathematics
teaching. Our challenge was to provide TLs with these kinds of experiences
while at the same time supporting them in their roles as emerging leaders.
The development of a comprehensive leadership framework and a curriculum that
supports it was a milestone in this regard. It was important because, as much
as the teacher leaders needed and wanted professional development that would
enhance their own classroom teaching, they also needed work that would build
their leadership capacity. Coming to clarity on this distinction led us to not
only be more explicit about the leadership implications of the mathematics
experiences in which TLs engaged, but also to put greater emphasis on
activities that were designed specifically to foster leadership among teacher
leaders[9].
[1] Acknowledgements: We wish to acknowledge the
staff of Mathematics Renaissance K-12. The work of the Renaissance was created
through the collective efforts of the Directors and Regional Directors (Kris
Acquarelli, Judy Anderson, Mardi Gale, Ana Golan, Gayle Maggi, Carole Maples,
Teferi Messeret, Gloria Moretti and Ann Stewart). Special acknowledgement is
given to Ellen Lee who took over as Project Director during the last two years
of the Renaissance and Barbara Miller who worked as a critical friend
throughout the project.
[2] Barbara Miller became an important influence
in the development of this effort.
[3] As illustrated in the NCTM Standards (1989,
1991, 1995), PSSM (2000), CA Framework (1992), and Adding it Up (2001).
[4] These ideas were further influenced by the
work of Nanette Seago and Judy Mumme in their Videocases for Mathematics
Professional Development Project.
[5] adapted by Judy Mumme from Cohen, D.K. &
Ball, D.L. (1999) Instruction, capacity, and improvement. (CPRE Research Report
No. RR--043). Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania, Consortium for Policy
Research in Education; and Kilpatrick, J. et.al. ed. (2001). Adding It Up:
Helping Children Learn Mathematics. Washington, D.C. National Academy
Press.
[6] We need to make a comment about the fractal
nature of the work. We’re not so sure that the three levels of work are always
self-similar and it may be problematic to consider them so. We struggle with
the issues here and need to spend more time considering the benefits and
liabilities of identifying these in terms of a fractal relationship.
[7] adapted by Judy Mumme from Cohen, D.K. &
Ball, D.L. (1999) Instruction, capacity, and improvement. (CPRE Research Report
No. RR--043). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Consortium for Policy
Research in Education.
[8] adapted by Judy Mumme from Cohen, D.K. &
Ball, D.L. (1999) Instruction, capacity, and improvement. (CPRE Research Report
No. RR--043). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Consortium for Policy
Research in Education.
[9] Our current project, Leadership Curriculum for
Mathematics Professional Development, is preparing materials to support TLs
leadership development, specifically in the area of designing and facilitating
professional development.
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