Designing and Implementing Professional Development Summary

Sunday, June 24, 2006

Report from Designing and Implementing Professional Development
Wayne Harvey EDC

How do teacher beliefs about math as a tool - part of the world, invented, something one does - affect what teachers do in their classrooms?

Distinguish among math knowledge - for teaching for doing math.

Math knowledge covers knowing definitions and conventions, algorithms

Mathematics knowledge for teaching includes knowing which concepts are easy or difficult.
Representing concepts so that others can understand
Connecting ideas to deepen understanding
Recognizing what students might be thinking or understanding

Important to provide experience thinking and struggling as what a mathematican does

Math is a way of thinking about the world - may explain why everyone needs math but not necessarily calculus

Different cultures have different interpretations of discourse and what this means; need to recognize this in our work as teachers.

Habits of mind Ð way to look at world (Al Cuoco)
Students should be
Pattern sniffers
Experimenters
Describers
Tinkers
Visualizers
Conjecturers
Guessers
Inventers

EDC project Focus on Math has some common principles:
Depth over breadth
Math is core
Capacity building - teachers drive pd
Community building - learn together

Some things to remember:
Building a math community is hard
Real math proficiency is hard
Dealing with all demands at once is hard.

Maybe deal with a thread rather than a whole
Evaluator getting into classroom observations; sit at lunch with them, listen to what teachers talk about.

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