Learning to Lead Mathematics Professional Development

"A valuable contribution to the field. These materials both acknowledge the complexity of the work and provide a carefully designed and sequenced curriculum for understanding it."
―Lew Romagnano, Professor of Mathematical Sciences
The Metropolitan State College of Denver

"The most usable, unique, and rigorous professional development tools to come along for mathematics. An effective professional development tool to nurture teacher leaders."
―April Cherrington, Mathematics Coordinator, San Mateo County Office of Education, CA

A new opportunity for mathematics professional development leaders to enhance their ability to support teacher learning!

Help leaders learn to lead professional development to achieve specific goals, increase their knowledge of mathematics, and build a repertoire of professional development strategies. Designed expressly for mathematics professional development leaders, this set of case-based leadership materials helps build the facilitation skills, content knowledge, and pedagogy to design and implement effective staff development.

Featuring a user′s guide, this package also includes two DVDs with 44 seminars arranged into seven modules containing notes, video clips, participant work, PowerPoint slides, and much more. The modules focus on important mathematics and facilitation skills, reflect research on adult learning, and model a community of practice.

Unlike a typical guide for a specific professional development program, these materials focus on facilitation issues that are likely to be encountered in a variety of mathematics professional development situations. The multimedia kit demonstrates how leaders can deal with key issues, including:

• Managing productive mathematical discussions
• Working with teacher explanations of mathematical ideas
• Being mindful of equity issues in mathematics teaching
• Selecting appropriate mathematical tasks
• Deepening teachers′ knowledge of mathematics

This set of mathematics seminars is the ideal resource for people charged with supporting teacher leaders and others who lead mathematics professional development. Potential users include curriculum leaders, math-science partnerships, university-district partnerships, and mathematics teacher educators.

"A valuable contribution to the field. Good mathematics teaching begins with a thoughtful analysis of important mathematical ideas, and effective mathematics professional development begins with thoughtful analysis of mathematics teaching. These materials both acknowledge the complexity of the work and provide a carefully designed and sequenced curriculum for understanding it." Author: Lew Romagnano, Professor of Mathematical Sciences Published On: 2006-09-20

"These materials demystify important aspects of professional development leadership and provide scaffolded learning opportunities to develop and apply skills for planning, facilitating, and assessing professional development in mathematics. As a leadership curriculum, this method dispels the idea that effective leaders of professional development are born, not made." Author: Barbara Miller, Director Published On: 2006-09-25

"Provides a curriculum based in authentic learning situations to strengthen professional development. Leaders will consider and study the many complexities of developing learning communities that deepen understanding of mathematics." Author: Shelley Kim Ferguson, Board of Directors Member Published On: 2006-08-31

"Helps develop a broad skill set to create a powerful learning experience for professional developers. Carroll and Mumme focus on the practical application of their materials and provide deep and robust content, useful tools and resources, and a strong research base." Author: Janice Bradley, Project Coordinator Published On: 2006-09-30

"The most usable, unique, and rigorous professional development tools to come along for mathematics. An effective professional development tool to nurture teacher leaders." Author: April Cherrington, Mathematics Coordinator Published On: 2006-08-30

"Mathematics leaders will find these materials unique in that they are designed specifically to help professional developers. We learn to be effective professional developers through viewing, analyzing, and reflecting on actual professional development situations and applying that perspective to our own practice." Author: Linda Gojak, President Published On: 2006-11-07