Sustaining Mathematics Professional Development Partnerships: A Self-Study to Examine the Roles of School-University Partners

• In Event: Scholars of Studying Teaching Collaborative: A Cross-Disciplinary Initiative to Improve Our Practice as University Instructors

Abstract

Objectives
This research describes a collective self-study outlining the design and implementation process of an innovative, strategic and sustainable mathematics professional learning model that included: a content-focused summer institute; academic year follow-up Lesson Study at school sites with ongoing mentoring. The school-university professional developers consisted of a mathematics educator, a mathematician, district math supervisor, and a middle school teacher. By leading the collective self-study, I describe how the iterative cycle of planning and implementation enhanced and evolved the design of the professional development model.

Theoretical Framework
Effective professional development includes projects with a content focus; teachers actively learning in context; coherence to standards; sustained duration and collective participation with a support network (Desimone, 2009). This project used these components as the blueprint and implemented the Japanese Lesson Study (Lewis, 2002; Fernandez, 2002; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999), a teacher-led professional development model to provide a sustained partnership. To evaluate the collaborative efforts between the school-university partnership, the team used a collective self-study method (Davey & Ham, 2009; Samaras & Freese, 2006).

Methods
The guiding research questions posed by the professional developers included:
1) What role do professional developers play to sustain teachers in their professional learning and improving teaching practices?
2) What critical factors have we faced and how will we address those factors?
Data sources include reflective memos from the professional developers and researcher’s memos from the planning and debriefing meetings. Using the qualitative approach, I analyzed the data using the constant comparative method, an inductive research method to generate themes through a constant comparison of incoming data against data previously collected and analyzed (Strauss & Corbin, 1994).

Results
Analysis of the reflective memos and the researcher’s memos revealed a set of common themes that included the role of the professional developers in building leadership in the schools; establishing an infrastructure for continued professional learning; and encouraging the hearts of teachers. The first theme, building leadership occurred as the professional developers worked intentionally to recruit school teams and knowledge base at school sites. The second theme, establishing an infrastructure for continued professional learning occurred through implementing Lesson Study as a school-based professional model. The project also bought time for teachers for professional development by providing funding for substitutes to release teachers for planning, observing and debriefing. The last theme and most important to supporting a sustainable professional development model was through what we called, encouraging the hearts, the affective support network. Teachers faced challenges and pressures by time and testing and needed recognition from their administrators so we sent letters of recognition to their administration and district supervisors. Finally, we celebrated their accomplishment at a conference on campus where teachers expressed their satisfaction with their participation in the professional development experience.

Significance
This project provides some considerations for mathematics professional developers as they engage in school-university projects, including strategies and barriers to overcome in designing a professional development model that is sustainable and effective.

Author

• Jennifer M. Suh, George Mason University