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Planning and Implementing Professional Development for Systemic Reform:
What We've Learned About the Process
Judith Fonzi
University of Rochester
Project Overview
Having recently completed our three-year, NSF-funded Local Systemic Change
Project (hereafter, LSC) for middle school mathematics my colleague, Raffaella
Borasi, and I have been engaging in some in-depth reflection focusing
on what we've learned about planning and implementing professional development
for systemic reform. In the spirit of collaborating with colleagues in
the larger community, I would like to share some of the things we have
come to know. I'll do so first by providing an overview of the project
context, then briefly engage in a "walk down memory lane" where
I'll share with you what we actually did and why, and finally I'll provide
a synthesized list of what we consider our most important lessons learned.
Our project included four small suburban school districts; each district
had only one middle school. Each of our four key staff members, all mathematics
teacher educators at local universities, was assigned to one of the schools
as the "school facilitator" to support the school's efforts
towards reform. As a project, our task was to bring about significant
reform in the entire mathematics program and provide 130 hours of professional
development for every math teacher in each of the middle schools.
We began the project with an outline of the major professional development
initiatives we expected to implement, but we found ourselves making changes
almost immediately. As the project proceeded and we learned more about
where the teachers were in their thinking about mathematics, teaching
and learning, and their abilities to put new ideas into practice, we found
ourselves re-inventing our professional development program to better
meet their needs. In addition, our program was modified in response to
the steady stream of new resources that were becoming available for use
in both classrooms and professional development.
In retrospect, the most important lessons we learned about planning and
designing professional development that is meant to bring about systemic
reform were:
- Listen carefully to what your evidence tells you about what teachers
and schools need;
- Look for ways to design professional development initiatives so that
they can address more than one goal at a time; and
- Engage in regular conversations with other professional development
providers who are doing similar work.
Our Goals, Audience, and Initial Hurdles and How We Thought about
Them
Our primary goal was to reform the entire middle school mathematics program
in light of the NCTM Standards and the newly developed state standards,
in each of our four participating districts. Exactly what that meant we
didn't really know. We did know that:
- The current programs were designed in the 80s (or maybe it was the
50s!) where students were typically passive receivers of mathematical
information, and learning was evaluated according to how much they could
tell back on an exam. And, it was clear that most teachers, administrators,
parents, and even students thought this was precisely as it should be!
- We needed to change attitudes about what mathematics is and what it
means to learn mathematics.
- We needed to change instructional and assessment practices if we were
to have any effect on the implemented mathematics program.
In our previous work, we had considerable success fostering and supporting
the development of an inquiry approach to teaching and learning mathematics
in a few teachers from each of the participant schools. These teachers
had been quite pleased with both the new role students were taking in
this learner-centered environment and with the level of understanding
students demonstrated as they engaged in complex mathematical tasks and
articulated their thinking. We therefore decided to capitalize on the
fact that there were a few "role models/converts/believers"
in each school and promote "teaching through inquiry" as a vehicle
for reforming both instructional and assessment practices. We soon learned
that it would take a whole lot more than that!
Our audience did indeed include a few "old friends," teachers
who had volunteered to work with us in previous NSF teacher enhancement
projects, but it also included many new folks. A condition of LSC projects
is that all math teachers in a school must participate in 130 hours
of professional development over the life of the project. We felt strongly
that reforming the mathematics program meant the entire mathematics
program, so we included both regular education and special education teachers.
Our schools included sixth grade, so we also had several elementary certified
teachers among our participants. The diversity among our districts and
our teacher participants presented some interesting opportunities as well
as some serious challenges.
We had several other hurdles, or downright obstacles, we knew about from
the very beginning-we discovered others as we proceeded. We knew, for
example, that:
- None of the districts had a mathematics coordinator, thus no one was
responsible for developing a common vision for the district's mathematics
program nor for charting a course for continuous improvement.
- Collaborative planning was not part of the culture of any of these
schools, and most of the teacher teams that had developed during our
previous work had been disbanded because of grade level changes.
- There was a revised state level assessment system being phased in
amid a great deal of misinformation and misunderstanding which, of course,
was made worse because of the lack of leadership and collegiality at
the district level. Fortunately, none of our schools had serious "test
score" problems coming into this project, but they were nevertheless
all anticipating the pressure of the "new" tests.
Our Original Professional Development Plan
We knew from the very beginning that we needed to develop some leadership
and collegiality, and we used the development of our project proposal
to immediately begin modeling such behavior. We included teachers and
administrators in our planning meetings, and, as a group, we discussed
what we felt were crucial components to successfully fostering and supporting
reform. Through this process, we made commitments to each other, and we
developed a "big picture" of a professional development program.
We planned several complementary initiatives, each with a distinct purpose:
- One-week Introductory Summer Institute with follow-up field experiences
(developed in our previous project) to introduce all new participants
to an inquiry approach to teaching mathematics, to develop a shared
vision of what a reformed math classroom could look like, and to provide
some support materials for teachers to plan and implement innovative
units in their own classroom. Participants would commit a priori to
develop and implement at least two innovative units based on what they
had learned. Lead teachers would support the field experiences. (This
initiative would be implemented in Years One and Two.)
- One-week Advanced Summer Institute with follow-up field experiences
focused on rethinking what algebra is, and how it should be taught in
middle school. Participants would commit a priori to develop and implement
an innovative unit, and lead teachers and the university faculty serving
as school facilitators would support the field experiences. (To be implemented
in Years Two and Three.)
- Monthly Leadership Seminar for two teachers from each school
(hereafter, lead teachers) and school facilitators to develop leadership
capacities, enhance current knowledge of math, teaching, learning, and
systemic reform and to provide a forum for sharing experiences and learning
from each other. (To be implemented during the school year for all three
years.)
- "Ad-hoc" professional development provided by the
school facilitators to respond to specific needs at the individual schools.
(Equivalent to about one-half day per month.)
The "Implemented" Professional Development Program
What Really Took Place the First Year and Why
Introductory Institute
We implemented our Introductory Summer Institute essentially as it was
originally conceived. The Summer Institute and facilitator's support materials
(Introducing Math Teachers to Inquiry: Framework
and Supporting Materials to Design Professional Development, Borasi
and Fonzi, (under review) we developed in our previous project had proven
to be very successful at beginning to challenge teachers' views of mathematics,
teaching and learning, and in supporting them to implement innovative
units in their classrooms. Therefore only minor revisions were needed
to address the LSC requirement that teachers become familiar with the
exemplary curricula and consider them for adoption. We decided to introduce
these curricula in this Institute so that teachers would consider them
as possible resources for their second innovative unit.
Leadership Seminar: Summer Institute
In contrast, our Leadership Seminar was dramatically reconceived. Because
of the timing of our funding, our Leadership Seminar would begin the September
after our first Summer Institutes. We knew this would not work.
"Lead teacher" was a brand new idea in this region, so the teachers
filling these positions would need some time and support to think about
what "lead teacher" could mean and to develop at least a preliminary
plan for enacting this new role. They were also going to need some experience
with the new curricula if they were going to be able to support their
colleagues' use of these materials. Meeting these needs would take considerable
time. Teachers would need time to brainstorm, to read, to think, to explore,
and to share.
To address this issue, we decided to add a two-part "kick-off"
Summer Institute for lead teachers, including three days at the beginning
of the summer and two at the end. We designed the first segment to act
as a catalyst and to develop a framework for work that the lead teachers
would do throughout the summer. During this time we raised issues about
teacher change and systemic reform and the lead teachers' role in these
processes. Lead teachers later followed up on these issues by reflecting
on their own journeys and writing autobiographies of the experiences that
most influenced their growth and by reading and reflecting on some relevant
articles ("Rethinking Restructuring: Building Habits of Effective
Inquiry," Szabo, 1996; "Assisting Teachers and Students to Reform
the Mathematics Classroom," Brown et al., 1996.
We also used this Institute to continue to develop our shared vision
of an inquiry pedagogy, using some examples from practice to provoke thinking,
(Borasi, 1996). We also introduced the lead teachers to some of the new
curricula by using them to challenge lead teachers' beliefs about probability.
We engaged them as learners in several probability experiences from Seeing
and Thinking Mathematically (STM Project, 1998), Connected Mathematics
(Lappan, 1998), and Mathematics in Context (NCRMSE and Freudenthal
Institute, 1997) and asked them to read and reflect on the entire probability
units in each curriculum project.
At the same time participants were also reading and discussing articles
which identified important probability concepts ("Uncertainty,"
Moore, 1990); "Probability and Coincidence," Paulos, 1988, the
current research on teaching and learning probability ("Research
in Probability and Statistics: Reflections and Directions," Shaughnessy,
1992), and the NCTM and state standard on probability. Lead teachers
became intrigued with how the new curricula put current research into
practice, and agreed to examine a few units during the summer.
During the two days at the end of the summer, lead teachers shared their
thoughts about when and how to use the new curriculum materials, and we
discovered that they had all decided to develop new units, taking inspiration
and some activities from these materials. While we would later come to
realize the limitations inherent in teacher-developed materials, we were
surprised and delighted with the commitment underlying their decisions.
We spent the majority of the end-of-the-summer meetings discussing lead
teacher roles and developing a preliminary year-long plan for implementing
their roles in their schools. It was clear to all of us that this "kick-off"
Summer Institute for lead teachers was the critical element that made
start-up so smooth.
Leadership Seminar: School Year Activities
Our half-day, monthly Leadership Seminar "officially" began
in September of our first year and continued for the next three years.
During the first year, the sessions were divided such that one-third of
the time was for sharing and two-thirds of the time was devoted to a more
focused learning experience.
As the first year of work with lead teachers unfolded, a number of issues
surfaced that significantly affected what and how we planned our professional
development program.
We realized from our summer work explicating the groups' conceptions
of an inquiry pedagogy that we needed to continue to work in this area.
Lead teachers needed to develop a language for talking about practice
so that they could better communicate and support others. So, during Leadership
Seminar we periodically examined examples from practice, sometimes published
examples (Lampert et al.,
1998), and sometimes examples from teachers' own work, to identify
evidence of an inquiry pedagogy.
Despite the fact that our Introductory Summer Institute highlighted some
very different geometry and measurement content, and lead teachers used
our support materials to develop similar experiences for their own students,
they tended to change their pedagogy but maintain their content. Since
it seemed to be more difficult for teachers to challenge or change content
than pedagogy, we began to think about how to help them develop images
and knowledge about new mathematical content.
The probability experiences we developed in the "kick-off"
Summer Institute, though primarily designed to introduce the new curricula,
had also introduced lead teachers to new probability concepts for middle
school. So, we decided to use the same types of materials orchestrated
differently, to introduce lead teachers to new ideas in geometry.
- First, to help lead teachers become aware of the geometric concepts
that are critical for applying geometric knowledge in today's world,
we asked them to read some current research ("Shape," Senechal,
1990) and the section regarding geometry from some NSF-funded curricula
(Connected Mathematics and Mathematics in Context).
- We then asked them to read some current research in the teaching
and learning of geometry ("Geometry: Research and Classroom Activities,"
Geddes and Fortunato, 1993) and the section about the approach to teaching
and learning geometry from the curriculum.
- Finally, to help lead teachers develop images of what this could look
like in practice, we asked them to carefully examine some units from
the curricula and note the content choices made by the authors.
- After developing the authors' list of "big ideas" in geometry,
we invited a local university mathematics professor to comment on the
list from his perspective of what's important for students to learn.
At the same time that we were focusing on geometry in Leadership Seminar,
we redesigned one of our graduate courses to challenge students' conceptions
of important mathematical content for middle schools. We divided the course
into a collection of "mini-series" designed to accomplish goals
similar to those of the geometry experience in Leadership Seminar but
for much smaller mathematical ideas, and we invited the lead teachers
to participate in as many mini-series as they wished.
School-Based Professional Development
We also learned early in the first year, when we discovered that the lead
teachers were not yet comfortable with the idea of mentoring their colleagues,
that our plans for school facilitators would need to change dramatically.
So, university mathematics educators serving as school facilitators took
on most of the responsibility for supporting the new participating teachers
as they planned and implemented their first innovative units (Borasi and
Fonzi, under review). They also participated in the school's Math Department
meetings and had lengthy discussions and strategy meetings with the lead
teachers.
A few months later, the lead teachers expressed a common need to continue
to work on their own practice and a common desire to have the support
of the school facilitator as well. Funding for school facilitators covered
only about one day per week, and we were all already putting in several
additional days per week on a volunteer basis. It was clear we needed
to find more efficient ways to meet everyone's needs rather than working
with each teacher individually.
We began to think about the lead teachers' classes as professional
development sites. Other participants were invited to observe the
lead teachers' classes and debrief with the lead teacher and school facilitator.
Same-grade colleagues were invited to participate in the planning meetings
between the lead teacher and school facilitator.
We also held a one-day project-wide session devoted to planning. We explicitly
shared the unit planning process that had emerged from our previous work
(Borasi and Fonzi, under review), and then we worked intensively with
small groups as they worked through the stages of the process to develop
a thematic unit on the Olympics. These "new" practices proved
to be more efficient, and at the same time good ways to begin building
collaborative communities within each of the schools.
Project-Wide Professional Development
Additional concerns surfaced as we continued to work with participating
teachers as they planned and implemented innovative experiences. Though
we initially were comfortable with teachers "picking and choosing"
activities from various units of the NSF-funded curricula, we began to
reconsider. Teachers' decisions about what content to cover, what to focus
on, what pieces of the unit to use or cut were often troubling to us.
They were making some headway with the general pedagogy but very little
with content. They were beginning to hear students' voices, appreciate
that they could engage in mathematical thinking, and include them in more
roles, but most teachers had not yet recognized how limited their view
of important mathematical content was. Those that did recognize it maintained
that they were not free to change the content, just the approach. We suspected
that these beliefs were grounded more in lack of understanding of what
the mathematics could be, than in the realities of the system. At the
same time that this was happening, the project staff was becoming more
familiar with the NSF-funded curricula and were beginning to recognize
that the curricula had the potential to help teachers develop images of
new or deeper content and to support them to teach that content--if
the units were read and implemented in their entirety.
Recognizing the need for teachers to have experiences identifying and
teaching "new" content, we decided to address the content problems
from several angles. In the Leadership Seminar we analyzed a sample of
the new state assessments and determined that the amount of content that
was actually required on the exam was minimal and surely didn't represent
an entire middle school program, thus providing "room" to add
some additional content. Then, with the goals of introducing teachers
to some new content that was already carefully developed for classroom
implementation and to begin a practice of collaborative planning, school
facilitators volunteered to facilitate school-based "planning groups"
around individual units in the NSF-funded curricula.
We invited all of the teachers at a grade level across the four schools
to participate in the planning groups, specifically designing the experience
to engage teachers as learners in the mathematics of the unit and then
to invite them to reflect on the significance of each activity in developing
the mathematical concept. The group examined the entire unit before they
began to plan their own implementation. This practice proved to be quite
effective, as teachers came to value the authors' careful sequencing of
activities and thus made only minor cuts when they implemented the unit
in their classes. In addition, teachers were beginning to see the value
of shared experiences and one school's faculty even decided to attend
the Advanced Summer Institute as a team. This unanticipated set of
professional development experiences was the precursor to "study
groups," a component of our Year Two professional development program
that proved to be a critical element in advancing systemic reform.
Taking Stock: Year One
At the end of the first year, we reflected on what we had learned to inform
our planning of the next year of professional development.
Participation
At the end of the first year we took stock of who was participating in
what types of professional development and noticed that special education
teachers were not participating at the same rates as the regular education
teachers. When we pursued this, they told us that math was only one of
several subjects they must support so they didn't feel they could give
it all of their professional development time. Several regular education
teachers were also finding it difficult to devote the amount of time necessary
to learn all these new things and still keep up with their day-to-day
responsibilities.
We also discovered that there were many "cultural" and policy
barriers that were influencing attendance at professional development
initiatives. For example, teachers were free to use whatever instructional
materials they wanted and teachers were expected to attend department
meetings, but no one followed up if they did not. Similarly, decisions
could be made at department meetings but there were no vehicles to enforce
them or consequences for not following through. Teachers were not required
to participate in professional development outside of the school day and
principals were not requiring them to participate during the school day
either.
Classroom Practices
We also took stock of what we, the professional development providers,
were learning about classroom practices:
- We were developing a genuine appreciation for the quality of the NSF-funded
curricula.
- We had learned that, despite the fact that all of our schools had
written grade-level curriculum documents, the teachers' implemented
curricula were always very different from each other. While this made
trying out NSF curricula units possible, it also allowed for not trying
them out if a teacher didn't want to.
- We realized that, like the lead teachers, most participating teachers
were generally making progress towards pedagogical reform but were not
making much progress in content reform.
The two sets of information, who was participating in what, and what
we were learning about classroom practices, had a significant influence
on the design of our second year program.
What Year Two Looked Like and Why
In light of all that we had learned, we felt that in order to reform the
entire school program we had to first develop a need for a comprehensive
and coherent program. We made developing collaborative communities
our primary goal and decided to concentrate most of our energies on school-based
initiatives. Fortunately, lead teachers were now willing to take on
more roles with their colleagues, including promoting peer collaboration
and even taking the lead in some initiatives.
Introductory Summer Institute
Year Two began with the Introductory Summer Institute with only minor
revisions, as it was continuing to serve us well. But this time, in order
to provide supported experiences in implementing professional development
initiatives, lead teachers co-facilitated the experience with project
staff.
Advanced Summer Institute
Our planning for the Advanced Summer Institute was influenced significantly
by what we were learning about teachers' reluctance to modify the content
of their curriculum and the wide variations within their actual implemented
curriculums. We designed our Advanced Summer Institute, which was to focus
on rethinking algebra, to take full advantage of the NSF-funded curricula.
Once again we divided a week-long institute into two parts, four days
in the beginning of the summer and one day at the end. In an effort to
challenge participants' views of "what counts as algebra" we
asked them to read Jim Fey's "Quantity" paper (1990) prior to
coming to the institute. We followed up on this reading with a discussion
of the ideas in the paper and additional readings that explicated the
algebra philosophies of the Connected Mathematics and Mathematics
in Context curricula. We then engaged the participants as learners
in some algebra activities that put these new ideas into practice. Many
of these activities were taken from the NSF-funded curricula. Then, during
the remainder of the summer, each participant read one of the algebra
units from either Mathematics in Context or Connected Mathematics
and prepared a presentation to highlight the big ideas in the unit and
how they are developed. At the end of the summer the units were presented
in the order in which they would be taught so that we could develop an
image and appreciation of the entire algebra strand. This experience prompted
the participants to suggest that they all try teaching a unit and share
the results. School facilitators once again offered to facilitate "planning
groups" (now called "study groups") for each of the units
chosen for implementation.
Algebra Study Groups
The algebra study groups served as the catalyst for several additional
study groups as teachers found these experiences to be both valuable and
time efficient; they were engaging in the same mathematical experiences
they would be planning for their classes, and the units proved to be powerful
and exciting. In several of the schools, teachers continued to plan together
and ultimately implemented several additional common units. School facilitators
were purposefully explicit about how they were planning and facilitating
the first few study groups so that lead teachers could eventually take
over the responsibility, which several did by the end of the year.
We complemented the unit study groups with a repeat of the first year's
mini-series which focused on rethinking specific mathematical topics.
In addition to addressing teacher content needs, we saw the mini-series
as a way to continue to promote school-based collaboration while at the
same time promoting cross-site collaboration. This time participation
was open to all teachers. We encouraged them to come as grade level teams
and to use this experience as a springboard for identifying and implementing
an innovative unit on the topic.
Leadership Seminar
The Leadership Seminar for Year Two was essentially the same as Year One,
except for the "sharing sessions." Lead teachers were no longer
interested in sharing the details of what was happening in their sites
because the schools had moved towards systemic reform in different ways
and therefore had mostly individualized needs at this point. Thus, sharing
sessions shifted from spontaneous discussions to pre-planned sessions
focused on a particular topic. For example, one of the lead teachers,
who was the regional liaison to the state for the new assessment program,
shared what she would be doing in the assessment training session with
area teachers. On another occasion lead teachers shared their experiences
with alternative scheduling as each school continued to struggle with
finding the ideal schedule.
The Final Phase of Professional Development: The Transition Year
In general, we were pleased with how our professional development program
progressed. By the beginning of the third year, we recognized that:
- We were well on our way to establishing collaborative cultures in
3 of our 4 schools;
- Considerable changes were taking place in both pedagogy and content
as a result of implementing some of the NSF-funded curricula units;
and
- Some teachers were beginning to see the advantages of a comprehensive
and well-articulated curriculum.
The third and final year needed to be a transition year; schools and faculties
had to become self-reliant in order to sustain their reform agendas. School
facilitators would need to phase out of the intense school-based work, but
continue to support the lead teachers as they took over responsibility for
their own schools. We therefore focused our attention on helping lead teachers
identify resources and develop leadership capacities among their colleagues.
Introductory Summer Institute
During the third summer we again repeated the Introductory Summer Institute
with lead teachers co-facilitating this experience with project staff. We
were hoping to encourage more teachers to take on leadership roles by scaffolding
some initial experiences for them, so we invited several previous participants
to participate in a number of sessions to share their experiences with teaching
mathematics through inquiry.
Advanced Summer Institute
We also repeated our Advanced Summer Institute. In order to capitalize
on the implementation experiences of the previous year's teachers, promote
collaboration, and provide opportunities for additional teachers to take
on leadership roles, we invited a few teachers to spend a day sharing
their experiences with implementing one of the NSF-funded algebra units.
We encouraged them to talk about the level of mathematics students were
engaged in, the role it played in students' understanding of algebraic
concepts, and the benefits of planning the unit in collaboration with
their colleagues. As we had hoped, the participants decided to implement
some of the units and formed study groups to do the planning. All of these
study groups were school-based and were facilitated by lead teachers or
other experienced teachers in the school.
Leadership Seminar
During this final year, our Leadership Seminar was devoted to helping
lead teachers and schools become independent. We concentrated our attention
in three areas. We helped lead teachers begin to develop leadership capacities
in colleagues by urging them to identify some of their colleagues who
had particular skills that could be of benefit to others, such as knowledge
and experience using graphing calculators. We then worked with the teachers
who had special talents to plan and implement small-scale professional
development experiences for others. We helped school communities learn
to identify professional development that would promote their reform agenda.
To do so, we offered mini-grants to support initiatives that would help
faculties gain skills to continue their own reform agendas. Faculties
had to reflect on their experiences, identify initiatives that would move
them further along, and then submit a proposal for funding the initiative.
And finally, we wanted to help lead teachers learn how to navigate local
and regional systems to identify and secure resources. Accordingly, we
invited district and regional administrators to our Leadership Seminar
to share detailed information about the types of funding that are available,
when and how to go about securing funds, and more general advice about
how to navigate these systems. This experience provided lead teachers
with the background information necessary to tap into the resources of
the system in appropriate and timely ways.
Some Key Lessons Learned about Planning Professional
Development Experiences
As we began preparing for a new project (a five-year K-12 project to
develop the foundations for systemic reform), we realized that we had
learned some very important lessons about planning for professional development
experiences. Among the most important are:
- Begin with a basic plan based on what you think your learners
will need.
- Be open enough to hear your learners' needs, to uncover and understand
their cultures, and be flexible enough to respond to them.
- Find ways to make professional development immediately useful without
succumbing to "make it and take it."
- Take a flexible stance toward resources; imagine how they can be used
in new ways to accomplish different purposes.
- Plan professional development experiences that are meaningful and
rich; they can, and probably should, address multiple goals at one time
but caution should be exercised so as not to lose the primary focus.
- Teachers should be the primary decision-makers in selecting a new
curriculum but only after they have spent considerable time reading
and discussing recent research in mathematics, teaching, and learning,
and have had supported experiences trying out units from several
of the new curricula.
- Teachers must receive substantial and on-going support to implement
the NSF-funded curricula successfully. They need to engage in the units
as learners, develop an understanding of the mathematical content and
the pedagogical practices, and they need to reflect on their implementation
in light of their goals.
- Quite possibly the most important lesson we learned for our own professional
growth is to collaborate with other professional development providers.
For the most part, we have learned these lessons the hard way, through
our own trial and error. We came to appreciate the importance of collaborating
with other professional development providers through our experiences
at our annual principal investigator meetings. We discovered that many
other people were indeed engaged in the same work and experiencing many
of the same needs. We began to identify other professional development
providers whose ideas we felt comfortable with and whose work we admired
and initiated on-going relationships. As a result, we have been able to
enrich some of our practices and miss some of the potholes in the road
by learning from other's experiences. We also found that discussing our
own work with others helped us to reflect more deeply and develop a language
for our practice.
Recently some materials have been published that identify some of the
same issues we identified and support professional development providers
through the planning process. See for example:
- Designing Professional
Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics (Loucks-Horsley
et al., 1998) for ideas about the planning process, the overall design
of professional development, and a description of several formats for
professional development.
- Guide to Facilitating
Cases in Education (Miller and Kantrov, 1998) for a very detailed
description of the key issues and practices to be considered when implementing
and facilitating cases as a method of professional development.
- Introducing Math Teachers to Inquiry: Framework and Supporting
Materials to Design Professional Development (Borasi and Fonzi,
available from the authors) for a detailed framework and supporting
materials for designing a one-year professional development program
to introduce teachers to teaching mathematics through inquiry and systemic
reform.
References
Borasi, R. (1996). Reconceiving Mathematics Instruction: A Focus on
Errors. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Borasi, R. and Fonzi, J. (under review). Introducing Math Teachers
to Inquiry: Framework and Supporting Materials to Design Professional
Development.
Brown, C.A., Stein, M.K., and Forman, E.A. (1996). Assisting teachers
and students to reform the mathematics classroom. Educational Studies
in Mathematics, 31 (1-2).
Fey, J. T. (1990). Quantity. In L. A. Steen (Ed.), On the Shoulders
of Giants. Washington, DC: National Research Council.
Geddes, D. and Fortunato, I. (1993). Geometry: Research and classroom
activities. In D. Owens (Ed.), Research ideas for the classroom: Middle
grades mathematics. NY: MacMillan.
Lampert, M. and Ball, D.L. (1998). Teaching, Multimedia, and Mathematics:
Investigations of Real Practice. NY: Teachers College Press.
Lappan, G., Fey, J., Fitzgerald, W., Friel, S., and Phillips, E. (1998).
Connected Mathematics. Menlo Park, CA: Dale Seymour.
Loucks-Horsley, S., Hewson, P.W., Love, N. and Stiles, K. E. (1998).
Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Miller, B. and Kantrov, I. (1998). Guide to Facilitating Cases.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
National Center for Research in mathematical Sciences Education (NCRMSE)
and the Freudenthal Institute (1997). Mathematics in Context. Chicago,
IL: Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). (1989). Curriculum
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