Professional Development of Mathematics Educators: Trends and Tasks

In this chapter the professional growth of mathematics educators – including teachers, teacher educators, and educators of teacher educators – is presented as an ongoing lifelong process. So far as teachers are concerned, it occurs in various stages and contexts, beginning with their experiences as school students, followed by formal preservice preparation towards an academic qualification and teaching certificate. It continues in formal and informal inservice settings and, sometimes, in graduate studies. In this chapter we focus on trends in the thinking about, and practices within, inservice professional development programmes for mathematics educators – inservice teachers as well as inservice teacher educators. We begin by offering a unifying conceptual framework which takes into account interrelations between the different groups covered by the term ‘mathematics educators’. This framework, which acknowledges the central role of tasks and programmes in which participants engage, facilitates thinking about the complexities and underlying processes involved in professional development in mathematics education. We describe in detail the main types of programmes reported in the literature. Examples of tasks with special potential for enhancing the professional development of both teachers and teacher educators are discussed. 1. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Numerous models have been put forward by scholars attempting to describe the main features of, and interrelationships within, the professional development of teachers. Most of these not only differ in their assumptions, expectations, and beliefs about professional growth, but also in the implicit and explicit demands