Examining the design features of a communication-rich, problem-centred mathematics professional development

ABSTRACT

While there is considerable scholarship describing principles for effective professional development, there have been few attempts to examine these principles in practice. In this paper, we identify and examine the particular design features of a mathematics professional development experience provided for middle grades teachers over 14 weeks. The professional development was grounded in a set of mathematical tasks that each had one right answer, but multiple solution paths. The facilitator engaged participants in problem solving and encouraged participants to work collaboratively to explore different solution paths. Through analysis of this collaborative learning environment, we identified five design features for supporting teacher learning of important mathematics and pedagogy in a problem-solving setting. We discuss these design features in depth and illustrate them by presenting an elaborated example from the professional development. This study extends the existing guidance for the design of professional development by examining and operationalizing the relationships among research-based features of effective professional development and the enacted features of a particular design.

KEYWORDS:

• Mathematics education
• professional development
• design features
• problem solving
• teacher education
• learning community
• community of practice
• collaboration
• communication

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Does it Work team for their support in conducting this research.

Disclosure statement

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and our ethical obligation as researchers, we are reporting that we have no conflicts of interests related to this work.

Notes

1. Since the time of the PD, Fraction Bars has been updated and is freely available as a web application at this URL: http://www.kaputcenter.umassd.edu/products/software/fractionbars/fb_web_ files/index.html

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. The original development of the InterMath tasks was supported through NSF [grant number ESI-9876611]. The development of this PD course and the research on it was supported by [grant number DRL-0633975], [grant number DRL-1036083].