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Connecting changes in secondary mathematics teachers’ knowledge to their experiences in a professional development workshop

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Abstract

This investigation describes secondary mathematics teachers’ learning and instructional change following their participation in a professional development workshop, the Enhancing Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation Project (ESP) (2004–2005), specifically focused on the selection and implementation of cognitively challenging mathematical tasks. Data consist of a pre/post-assessment of teachers’ knowledge of the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks and videotaped discussions and written artifacts from the professional development sessions. A mixed methods approach was used to identify connections between teachers’ learning and their experiences in the ESP workshop. Results indicate that ESP teachers developed new ideas about the influence of mathematical tasks on students’ learning. Increases in teachers’ knowledge of the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks were closely linked to ideas represented in frameworks and discussions from the ESP workshop and to teachers’ experiences in solving challenging mathematical tasks as learners.

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Notes

  1. Principal investigators on the ESP Project were Margaret Smith, Ellen Ansell, Beverly Michaels, and Paul Gartside (University of Pittsburgh). The author served as ESP Project Director.

  2. Teachers in the project were from different schools and school districts, teaching different grade levels and mathematics courses. Student achievement data and value-added data were not available to the ESP research team.

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Acknowledgments

The work described in this article was conducted under the auspices of the ESP Project, through a grant from the National Science Foundation (DUE-0301962), and is based on dissertation research conducted at the University of Pittsburgh by Melissa D. Boston under the directorship of Margaret S. Smith. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Foundation. The author would like to thank Brian Molinero, Duquesne University, for his assistance with reliability coding for the task-sort responses and videotaped ESP sessions. The author would also like to thank Margaret Smith, Fran Arbaugh, and three anonymous reviewers for their thorough and thoughtful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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  1. Duquesne University, G-14 Canevin Hall, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15282, USA

    Melissa D. Boston

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Boston, M.D. Connecting changes in secondary mathematics teachers’ knowledge to their experiences in a professional development workshop. J Math Teacher Educ 16, 7–31 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-012-9211-6

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