Interweaving Instructional Design and Professional Development to Advance Teachers' Aspirations to Improve Their Mathematics Teaching

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 11:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: A Symposium of Innovative Attempts Toward Incremental Change for Mathematics Teachers

Abstract

In this contribution to the symposium, we focus on supporting mathematics teaching through resource development. A central resource in our recent design research work (Cobb et al., 2016) is an instructional sequence on early number for preschool mathematics teaching (pre-K and kindergarten in the U.S.; Authors, YEAR6, YEAR7). Two intertwined concerns—designing and refining the sequence, and supporting teachers in its adoption—form the basis of this contribution.

Like transformational and incremental PD traditions, we are deeply concerned with improving how mathematics is taught and learned at scale. However, we do not see the main issue as transforming how teachers currently teach. Instead, our primary focus is understanding how to design resources that teachers will willingly use and that effectively support them in improving their mathematics teaching (Pepin, 2018; Authors, YEAR6). We expect teachers to want to engage in different instructional practices once it becomes clear to them that this is part of what is necessary to make their mathematics teaching more successful, manageable, and rewarding. Our approach to PD centers on three aspects we prioritize when designing resources, which subsequently guide our PD efforts.

The first aspect is purpose. A central challenge in designing resources is conveying the importance of the educational goals they aim to achieve, so teachers recognize these goals as worthwhile. In our PD, we make the purpose of the instructional resource the initial focus.

The next aspect is navigability. Resources need to be designed so that they help teachers see the purpose as attainable. This involves portraying the path by which the educational goals might be reached: where to start, which incremental objectives to pursue sequentially, and how progress will be recognized. Learning about navigability can be challenging, which necessitates that teachers already recognize the overall purpose of the instructional resource as worthwhile.

The third aspect is the operational one. It encompasses issues related to daily instructional engagements with a class. In a teaching resource, it is the most extensive aspect. It includes detailed descriptions and rationales of instructional activities and the use of mathematical tools. In PD, this aspect demands the most time and learning. For teachers, it represents the greatest challenge and risk, as it entails exploring new ways of engaging in their daily work with students.

While the focus of this contribution is conceptual, we draw on PD conducted with Mexican kindergarten teachers to illustrate how attention to purpose and navigability of instructional resources can facilitate teachers’ willingness to keep perfecting their command of the operational aspect of the resource use, including its instructional rationale.

In this approach to PD, transformations in instructional practices, rather than being the target or product of researchers’ intervention, are conceived as a consequence of providing teachers with resources and supports that enable them to regard their aspirations to improve their teaching as realizable. Given that this shift in conceptualising the teacher PD efforts afforded considerable teacher engagement and initial success, we propose that it deserves broader research attention.

Authors

• José Luis Cortina, Universidad Pedagogica Nacional

• Jana Visnovska, The University of Queensland