Refining a Model With Tools to Develop Mathematics Professional Development Leaders: An Implementation Study

• In Event: The Impact of Professional Development: Then and Now

Abstract

Refining a Model with Tools to Develop Mathematics Professional Development Leaders is a NSF-funded research-practice partnership (RPP) between a university-based research team and the STEM department of a large urban school district. The RPP applied design-based implementation research to build and study district capacity to conduct school-based mathematics professional development (PD) to support middle school teachers’ implementation of their new task-based mathematics curriculum. Our approach was to adapt, implement, analyze and revise the Problem Solving Cycle (PSC) model of PD and Teacher Leadership Preparation (TLP) model of leader preparation in support of the district’s needs (Borko et al., 2015).
The PSC consists of three interconnected workshops, organized around a mathematics task from the district’s middle school curriculum. During each sequence of workshops, teachers work in small groups to solve the task and prepare to teach it. They then participate in video-based discussions (VBDs) with clips from participants’ math lessons to analyze student reasoning and instructional practices. The TLP prepares Teacher Leaders (TLs) to plan and lead PSC workshops with the mathematics teachers in their schools. The central component is a series of meetings that provide ongoing, structured guidance for the TLs as they prepare to lead PSC workshops. In a typical TLP meeting focused on VBDs, the TLs discuss the purpose of the upcoming PSC workshop and how a VBD can support that purpose, and they plan and rehearse their VBDs. The university team initially designed and led the TLPs. To create a sustainable program, the district mathematics team assumed increasing responsibility for these sessions each year and now designs and leads the TLPs independently.
One central analysis examined how the TLs learned and adapted key elements of the PSC model over three years of the project. Because both the TLP and PSC models are designed to be adapted by users, we expected to see modifications made over time (Koellner & Jacobs, 2015). As the TLs increased their focus on adapting the design of their PSC workshops in response to the goals of their schools and needs of their colleagues, they became more comfortable seeing the PSC as a malleable PD model through which they could address these priorities. More specifically, our analyses revealed an interesting blend of aspects of the models that did not change over time as well as changes that were driven by either intention or disruption. For example, Do the Math (solving the selected math task) was used from the beginning and remained central throughout the project. TLs took ownership of the way they led Do the Math by adapting the substance to goals of the school. TLs also continued to lead VBDs, and they made them their own by using video clips and launching questions that reflected their school goals. We saw stability in how the district mathematics leaders used modeling, debriefing, planning and rehearsals to support TLs’ preparation for conducting activities central to the PSC model, such as Do the Math and VBDs.

Authors

• Hilda Borko, Stanford University

• Janet Carlson, Stanford University