Investigating a Professional Development Facilitator’s Moves to Enhance Teacher Knowledge and Practices

• In Event: Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: Supporting Teacher Leading and Learning

Abstract

The study addresses the issue of understating the strategies, knowledge, and role of PD facilitators aimed to foster teacher knowledge to teach mathematics to Latino/a students. The study focuses on the facilitators’ strategies used during a three-year long PD intervention in two schools located in the Midwest. Four elementary teachers participated in the study. Adopting a grounded theory approach, the planning meetings held by the facilitator and the teachers were analyzed. The notion of move (van Dijk, 1987) from the field of semiotics proved as a useful theoretical construct in understanding goal-oriented discursive actions of the PD facilitator. A theoretical model to characterize the PD facilitator’s strategies constitutes the main finding of this study.

Authors

• Rukiye Didem Taylan, MEF University

• Amanda Thomas, The Pennsylvania State University - Harrisburg

• Luz Edith Valoyes, Center for Advanced Educational Research - University of Chile

• Kathryn B. Chval, University of Missouri - Columbia