Abstract
Organizing teacher learning around the study of mathematical tasks and associated student work is a version of practice-based professional development that has been used effectively with preservice teachers and inservice elementary school teachers of mathematics. In this chapter, we examine the research evidence regarding the use of student work in teacher education and professional development, and we consider the potential impediments to using such an approach with inservice secondary school teachers, given many facets of their work and their preparation that appear to mitigate against the effectiveness of such an approach. To explore the feasibility of this approach with secondary school mathematics teachers, we consider in some detail the use of student work on one mathematics task, adapted from the PISA mathematics assessment, within a particular professional development initiative involving teachers in grades 7–11. Our examination of this experience indicates that although student work is not a self-enacting tool for teacher learning, professional developers can engage secondary school mathematics teachers with student work in ways that afford powerful and potentially transformative learning opportunities.
Keywords
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Acknowledgements
We thank Valerie Mills, Dana Gosen, and Geraldine Devine—leaders of the DELTA project in Oakland Schools—for allowing us to witness their skillful practice as teacher professional developers. They graciously agreed to use the PISA Apples task in their project, and they made available to us detailed session records and artifacts. We also thank Patricia Kenney for her assistance in identifying the PISA Apples task as a fruitful candidate for use in this work and Rachel Snider for her assistance with data collection, analysis, and interpretation. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1019513 [Using PISA to Develop Activities for Teacher Education] and the Michigan Department of Education for its grant to Oakland Schools [Developing Excellence in Learning and Teaching Algebra]. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation and Michigan Department of Education, nor those of any of the folks acknowledged above.
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Silver, E.A., Suh, H. (2014). Professional Development for Secondary School Mathematics Teachers Using Student Work: Some Challenges and Promising Possibilities. In: Li, Y., Silver, E., Li, S. (eds) Transforming Mathematics Instruction. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04993-9_17
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