professional communities: teachers supporting teachers

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Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers Author(s): Lisa Byrd Adajian Source: The Mathematics Teacher, Vol. 89, No. 4 (APRIL 1996), pp. 321-324, 364 Published by: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27969765 . Accessed: 18/05/2014 11:01 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Mathematics Teacher. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.48.36.34 on Sun, 18 May 2014 11:01:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers

Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting TeachersAuthor(s): Lisa Byrd AdajianSource: The Mathematics Teacher, Vol. 89, No. 4 (APRIL 1996), pp. 321-324, 364Published by: National Council of Teachers of MathematicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27969765 .

Accessed: 18/05/2014 11:01

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Mathematics Teacher.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.48.36.34 on Sun, 18 May 2014 11:01:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers

Connecting Research to Teaching

Lisa Byrd Adajian

Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers

In the past decade, numerous projects aimed at

improving the teaching and learning of mathe matics have been developed. One theme that has

repeatedly emerged from these and other reform efforts is the importance of a strong professional community for helping teachers implement reform.

When teachers are active participants in a profes sional community of their peers, they gain impor tant knowledge and psychological support. In addi

tion, when teachers' efforts are guided by their

professional community, reform is more widespread and long lasting.

As mathematics teachers work to implement the vision of mathematics instruction described in the NCTM's Standards documents (NCTM 1989,1991, 1995), they will most likely find that the nature of their work is technically more difficult. They will not only undertake a wider variety of tasks but also find little specific knowledge about how best to

proceed. Although these NCTM documents are

based on a constructivist theory of learning, this model of how people learn does not automatically translate into specific instructional techniques (Simon 1995). When teachers work independently to change

their classroom practices, they often lack the psy

chological support they need to persist (Wiske et al.

1992). Without the support of their fellow mathe matics teachers, they often feel alone and uncertain in their efforts. Furthermore, if their efforts are not coordinated with those of other mathematics teachers in their school, reform-minded teachers risk fragmenting their students' experiences in mathematics.

If teachers are asked where they are most likely to gain new information about teaching?and sup port for implementing change?they invariably identify their colleagues as the most important source. For some teachers, these exchanges of infor mation take place in their school, but for others, such communication is more likely to occur outside the school with colleagues they have met at work

shops, conferences, or other professional

development activities. In either situation, teachers find their professional community to be an impor tant source of new knowledge and support for

implementing reform. A great deal of variability exists in opinions

about where teachers' professional community is most likely to develop and at what level of the sys tem such communities should be fostered. Some

might argue that the professional community for mathematics teachers is, or should be, centered on their membership in a professional association, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

(NCTM). Others might suggest that teachers' pro fessional community is more likely to be centered where they teach?in either the school or the

department. Still others claim that like-minded col

leagues provide the locus for teachers' shared sense

of purpose and collaborative activity. For many teachers, the reality is that multiple professional communities operate at the same time (Rowan 1991).

BEYOND COLLABORATION ? THE PROMISE OF A STRONG PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY In a national study of schools that have actively engaged in efforts to reform their mathematics pro grams, the National Center for Research in Mathe matical Sciences Education (NCRMSE) found a sig nificant correlation between teachers' professional community and reformed mathematics instruction. For the seventy-six high schools surveyed, teachers who reported working in schools with higher levels

Edited by J. Michael Shaughnessy [email protected] Portland State University Portland, OR 97207

Lisa Byrd Adajian, [email protected], is an assistant pro fessor in the department of mathematical sciences at Port land State University, Portland, OR 97201. Her interests lie in working with teachers to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Without support, mathematics

teachers

often feel uncertain in

their efforts

Vol. 89, No. 4 ? April 1996 321

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Page 3: Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers

Teachers must have

the power to

participate

actively in

defining the goals of

their effort

of professional community also reported engaging in instructional practices more consistent with the vision set forth by the current reform documents in mathematics education (Adajian 1995). Moreover, these findings are consistent with those from other efforts aimed at improving mathematics instruction, such as the Urban Mathematics Collaboratives, the

QUASAR project, and other exemplary programs.

Urban Mathematics Collaboratives

The Urban Mathematics Collaboratives (UMC), in eleven major metropolitan areas across the United

States, was a national intervention project, funded

by the Ford Foundation and aimed at reforming the

teaching of mathematics. The focus of this interven tion was to address teachers' tremendous sense of isolation and lack of resources for learning new

information about mathematics and about teaching and learning mathematics. In an effort to address these deficiencies and give teachers access to resources and to information about ongoing devel

opments, individual teachers were invited to join collaboratives with university and industrial math

ematicians, leaders in mathematics education, dis trict administrators, and other teachers who also were attempting to teach innovative mathematics curricula in new ways. Although not referred to as

communities, the collaboratives were an attempt to

change fundamentally the nature of these teachers'

professional work lives. In the Ford Foundation's view (1984), there was a need to provide for mathematics teachers, especially those in inner-city schools, sustained pro fessional support, including opportunities for col

leagueship with other mathematicians and mathemat ics teachers, time to think and to plan, and modest funds to support the integration of new ideas and methods into their teaching.

The Foundation hoped that the collaborative

projects would eventually result in fully operative networks that would function under a planned but nondirective "user as problem solver" approach. The intent was to give the participants information and support with the expectation that this effort would enable them to define and resolve the instructional problems germane to their own partic ular setting. It was further expected that through participating in this instructional problem-solving process, the teachers would increase their own pro fessional knowledge and expertise about teaching mathematics.

All the participating teachers interviewed by the documentation team reported that their participa tion in the collaboratives had a significant impact on the way they taught mathematics. These teach ers reported a greater awareness and use of tech

nology, such as computers and calculators; an

increased awareness of, and emphasis on, such mathematical topics as statistics and probability; and an increased emphasis on problem solving. They also identified a renewed enthusiasm for

teaching. The survey results gathered by the Foundation's

documentation team also indicated that teachers

perceived that their colleagues had the most influ ence on their own teaching style. The individuals who participated more frequently in collaborative activities and the sites that had a higher proportion of UMC-active teachers responded more favorably to recommended changes and reform ideas about

teaching mathematics. According to Romberg and Middleton (1995,175), these data indicate that "without programs that foster collaboration, teach ers would not be able to discover new teaching methods and ways of dealing with students and administration that their colleagues can and do

provide."

QUASAR Another perspective on the importance of teachers'

professional community for teachers of mathemat ics is given by the QUASAR project (Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning). QUASAR is a national educational reform project funded by the Ford Foundation and focused on enhancing middle school mathematics instruction for students in economically disadvan

taged communities. Although QUASAR was

designed as an intervention project and as a practi cal school-demonstration project, another major component was a complex research effort aimed at

studying educational change and improvement. At the end of the first three years, Brown and Smith

(1994) reported on their work with the QUASAR site teachers. Their work with middle school math ematics teachers has focused not only on develop ing the capacity of individual teachers but also on

building a collaborative community so that teach ers participate in a "network of activities in which teachers learn together and work together toward a jointly held goal, the reform of their mathemat ics instructional program." According to these authors (p. 9),

[wlithin the QUASAR project, there is a growing con viction that we need to come to view teacher education and teacher development as the building of communi ties of collaborative reflective practice and begin to consider new ways to provide teacher assistance activ ities that move beyond the individual to communities of teachers and begin to see the context within which teachers work as the setting for their learning.

Brown and Smith reported also that the capacity for teachers to work together in productive ways developed in a slow and evolutionary manner.

322 THE MATHEMATICS TEACHER

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Page 4: Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers

Exemplary programs

Additional insights into the role of a departmental community in teaching mathematics are presented in Driscoll's Stories of Excellence (1987). In a study funded by the National Institute of Education to "uncover factors and conditions associated with excellence in precollege mathematics" (p. 1), Driscoll and his associates convened a panel of

experts to rate over 150 school programs that had submitted evidence of excellence in students' out comes: high test scores, exceptional enrollments, awards, notable success with females and minori

ties, and special success with extracurricular activi ties. Of these 150 or so schools, 28 were chosen for

in-depth visitation and study; of these 28,10 are

reported as case studies in the NCTM publication Stories of Excellence: Ten Case Studies from a

Study of Exemplary Mathematics Programs (Driscoll 1987).

According to Driscoll, several factors were com mon to these stories of excellence: effective leader

ship, careful decisions about the mathematics cur

riculum and its implementation, and classroom climates characterized by respect and dignity. How

ever, the most important theme was the high degree of cohesiveness, collegiality, and sharing among the mathematics staffs they visited. Driscoll contends that "[i]t is impossible to overstress the value of teacher collegiality to the quality of the mathematics program ... we came away from our

study convinced that cohesiveness and sharing, along with leadership that makes it possible for them to flourish, form a solid foundation on which to build an exemplary mathematics program" (p. 2). Driscoll attributes the influence of collegiality to the fact that it helps teachers remain focused on

the goals that they have established for the mathe matics program. It also affords teachers the oppor tunity constantly to revisit and refamiliarize them selves with the goals, thereby increasing their commitment and the consistency of their efforts.

DEVELOPING A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY

According to the research, the most logical place for teachers' professional community to develop seems to be within their respective school sites. There teachers spend most of their time and encounter the specific problems and demands of

implementing reform. And it is among their col

leagues that teachers are most ready to look for and receive help. What aspects define a professional community for mathematics teachers that is focused on improving its mathematics program? Crucial elements include shared goals about the

purpose of teaching mathematics and coordinated efforts to attain these goals, opportunities for

teachers to engage in collaborative professional learning, and opportunities for teachers to define the goals of their efforts.

Shared goals and coordinated effort At the heart of every definition of community is the idea of a shared sense of purpose. Nothing seems

more essential to the formation of community than the development of these shared goals. A cohesive and reform-oriented professional community? within a school or a mathematics department?will exist only to the extent that the teachers believe in, and are committed to, the goals and the intentions of the proposed changes for the mathematics pro gram. Once teachers in a mathematics department reach consensus about the purpose of their mathe matics program, they must also be willing to coordi nate their individual efforts so that the shared

goals can be attained. In other words, they must be

willing to set aside their own personal prerogatives in favor of the shared goals and purposes of the

group.

Collaborative professional learning

Collaborative professional learning occurs when teachers participate with their peers in staff

development activities and have other opportuni ties to work together?to collaborate and to reveal and discuss their classsroom practices. These activ ities are essential for helping teachers to under stand the intentions of the reform in mathematics education and to acquire the knowledge and exper tise that they will need to manage the demands of their efforts.

Staff development must be comprehensive and

ongoing and offer opportunities for teachers to

practice or experiment with ideas that are specifi cally linked to the school's efforts to enhance the mathematics program. In this way, teachers can

build consensus and a common language of reform; they can also acquire up-to-date knowledge to help orient their efforts toward reform.

Teachers must also have opportunities to work

together to solve the instructional problems of their work. The intrinsic reward of teaching?helping students learn?is what most engages teachers in

their work. When teachers collaborate on, and talk

about, instructional practices and students' learn

ing, they acquire new knowledge about teaching and learning. They also get important help with

managing the feelings of uncertainty about whether these new methods will result in better outcomes for students. In addition, by revealing their curricular and pedagogical intentions to the

scrutiny of the group, teachers work to unify the shared sense of purpose about the mathematics

program.

Having a shared sense

of purpose is an essential

component of

community

Vol. 89, No. 4 ? April 1996 323

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Page 5: Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers

Teachers define the goals

Finally, for teachers both to understand and to buy into the proposed changes in the mathematics pro gram, they must have the power to participate actively in defining the goals of their efforts. Oppor tunities must exist within the institution for them to define the instructional problems that need to be

solved, to establish priorities, and to seek solutions. Teachers participating in decisions about the math ematics program will derive the maximum direct

benefit, since this sphere of influence is more ger mane to their main interest, the work of teaching mathematics. Furthermore, the extent to which

they feel empowered to influence the outcome and the implementation of these decisions should increase their willingness to continue.

These three dimensions of teachers' professional community are highly interactive and actually cocreate each other (Louis and Kruse 1995). For

example, having a shared sense of purpose is a nec

essary component of community. For teachers to feel like members of the group, they must identify with its goals and values. In addition, teachers will

identify with, and commit to, those goals more

strongly if they participate in their formation

(Romberg and Webb 1995). Therefore, one way to increase teachers' shared sense of purpose about the mathematics program is to give them collective control over important decisions, which at a mini mum would include defining the goals of their efforts. Similarly, teachers who have opportunities to collaborate and talk critically about their work have a forum in which this consensus can be creat ed. And so it goes. These dimensions of a profes sional teaching community do not exist in isolation, and when they operate together, they appear to have dramatic consequences for both teachers and students. The research on professional communi ties does not clearly indicate which of these compo nents is the best starting point for developing a pro fessional community, although in the NCRMSE

study, collaborative professional learning appeared to be more important for helping teachers reform their mathematics instruction (Adajian 1995).

The relationship between teachers' professional community and reformed mathematics instruction is somewhat reciprocal; they seem to reinforce each other. A number of teachers in the QUASAR schools initially expressed reservations about work

ing with their colleagues, perceiving the demands of meeting and planning together to be a distrac tion from their own individual efforts and teaching. But as these teachers developed an increased

understanding of reformed mathematics instruc tion and began to implement these practices in their classrooms, their willingness to participate increased, especially when they realized that they

could learn from the other teachers in their school

(Brown and Smith 1994). As these teachers

engaged in efforts to reform their mathematics

instruction, they were motivated to seek out sup port from their peers, which worked to reinforce and strengthen their professional community. Simi

larly, as the professional community matured, these teachers' abilities to implement instructional reform also increased.

CONCLUSIONS

Participating in a strong professional community can accrue many potential benefits for teachers of mathematics: it can help them share the work of

teaching and can help increase their collective

knowledge and expertise, their capacity to solve dif ficult instructional problems, their sense of effec

tiveness, and their commitment to improving not

only their individual practice but the mathematics

program overall. It cannot be assumed, however, that teachers'

participation in a strong professional community will automatically result in reformed classroom

practice. A shared sense of purpose centered on tra ditional methods of instruction and norms of achievement may actually impede reform (Talbert and Perry 1994). Therefore, the potential for a pro fessional community to assist teachers in navigat ing the demands of reform will also depend on

whether the group's goals are oriented by impor tant documents like the NCTM's Standards docu ments (1989,1991,1995).

Even a strong professional community commit ted to reform-minded goals cannot, in and of itself, guarantee reformed practice. A more likely sce nario is that if teachers embark on an agenda of reform and begin to teach in new ways such that

they experience uncertainty in their work and a need for new knowledge, and if they have a profes sional community of support to which to turn, then they will be better able to manage this uncer

tainty; acquire new knowledge; and, by extension, persist in their efforts (Rowan, personal communi

cation). Therefore, schools that have strong profes sional communities should be expected to demon strate efforts aimed at improving the teaching of

mathematics that are more long lasting and more

pervasive.

REFERENCES Adajian, Lisa Byrd. "Teachers' Professional Communi

ty and the Teaching of Mathematics." Ph.D. disser tation, University of Wisconsin?Madison, 1995.

Brown, Cathy A., and Margaret S. Smith. "Building Capacity for Mathematics Instructional Innovation in Urban Middle Schools: Assisting the Development of Teachers' Capacity." Paper presented at the

(Continued on page 364)

324 THE MATHEMATICS TEACHER

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Page 6: Professional Communities: Teachers Supporting Teachers

GUSDE TO ADVERTISERS (Continued from page 362)

culator's graphing capability. Workshops were held in conjunc tion with the annual meeting of the Oklahoma Council of Teachers of Mathematics. In addition, the state's seven professional devel

opment centers (PDCs) advertised and hosted workshops for teach ers in their regions of the state. The trainers scheduled their own

workshops and recruited atten dees. By December 1992, over 1000 middle school mathematics teachers had attended a work shop and received an overhead

graphing calculator for their classrooms. The key to the proj ect's success was the level of com mitment and professionalism of the trainers, a remarkable group of able and energetic mathemat ics teachers who are enthusiastic about technology and capable of devising interesting and effective strategies for using technology in classrooms.

The third phase of the project targeted high school teachers and began with the donation of 1500 additional Casio OH7000G graph ing calculators. During this phase, the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) sponsored the publication of a

special instruction booklet for the project. In September 1993, a

full-day session was conducted for trainers, both experienced and new. Experienced trainers described the details of workshop organization, shared hints and tips, and modeled some success

ful workshop presentations for the new trainers. During the 1993-94 school year, workshops were held. Those attending received training as well as an overhead graphing calculator to use in their classrooms.

By the end of the fall 1994 semester, over 2600 Oklahoma mathematics teachers of grades 6-12 had attended workshops and received overhead graphing cal culators for their classrooms. In

spring 1995, the project shifted into a passive phase; the remain ing calculators and materials were placed in the network of PDCs, and teachers who had not yet received a calculator were invited through mailings from the PDCs to obtain one, along with the SEDL-sponsored instruction booklet, from their regional PDC.

Assessing the impact This project is a model of one

approach to systemic change. Although the change activity was

relatively modest, by reaching almost an entire state's teacher population in grades 6-12, diffu sion was rapid and reliable. One measure of effectiveness of the project is found in the number of teachers who participated. In addition, feedback and other indicators support the perception that this project did indeed effect change in the teacher partici pants and in mathematics instruction statewide.

For more information contact

Andy Magid, Department of

Mathematics, University of Okla homa, 601 Elm St, Room 423, Norman, OK 73019; (405) 325

6711; fax: (405) 325-7484; e-mail: [email protected].?Andy

Magid and Susan Gay. @

^JConnecting Research to Teaching-Continued from page 324

annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, La, April 1994.

Driscoll, Mark. Stories of Excellence: Ten Case Studies from a Study of Exemplary Mathematics Programs. Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1987.

Ford Foundation. "Secondary School Mathematics Program." New York: Ford Foundation, 1984.

Louis, Karen Seashore, and Sharon D. Kruse. Professionalism and

Community: Perspectives on Reforming Urban Schools. Newbury Park, Calif.: Corwin Press, 1995.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Curriculum and Evalu ation Standards for School Mathematics. Reston, Va.: The Council, 1989.

-. Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics. Reston, Va.: The Council, 1991.

-. Assessment Standards for School Mathematics. Reston, Va.: The Council, 1995.

Romberg, Thomas A, and James A. Middleton. "Conceptions of Math ematics and Mathematics Education Held by Teachers." In Collabo ration as a Process for Reform, edited by Norman Webb and Thomas

A. Romberg. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.

Romberg, Thomas A., and Norman L. Webb. "The Urban Mathemat ics Collaboratives as Reform." In Collaboration as a Process for

Reform, edited by Norman Webb and Thomas A. Romberg. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.

Rowan, Brian. The Shape of Professional Communities in School. Stanford, Calif.: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary Teaching, Stanford University, 1991.

Simon, Martin A. "Reconstructing Mathematics Pedagogy from a Con structivist Perspective." Journal for Research in Mathematics Edu cation 26 (March 1995):114-45.

Talbert, Joan, and Rebecca Perry. How Department Communities Mediate Mathematics and Science Education Reforms. Stanford, Calif.: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary Teaching, Stanford University, 1994.

Wiske, Martha Stone, Cynthia Y. Levinson, Paul Schlichtman, and Walter Stroup. Implementing the Standards of the NCTM in Geome

try. Madison, Wise: National Center for Research in Mathematics Education, University of Wisconsin?Madison, 1992.

?)

364 THE MATHEMATICS TEACHER

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