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A critical aspect of Mathematics Teacher Leaders' (MTLs) multi-faceted work is facilitating collective disciplinary discussions relevant and accessible for teachers. While research has identified goals for teacher learning, how MTLs learn to support these goals in content-specific ways is still under investigation. In this study, we lift the classroom design and analytic framework of Productive Disciplinary Engagement to examine the work of 73 MTLs and two expert facilitators in a professional development setting. Our use of the framework as an analytic lens to examine leader professional development revealed critical MTL and facilitator practices that supported productive mathematical engagement and practices that hindered engagement. We contend that productive disciplinary engagement provides a fruitful lens as an analytic framework for research. We also argue that it may serve as a valuable design framework for MTL and teacher professional development in future research and development efforts.

Mathematics teachers are increasingly being called to integrate mathematical modeling into their course sequences and curriculum (NCTM 2018; NGA Center and CCSSO 2010). Mathematical modeling is a dynamic cycle calling teachers to engage in complex instructional work that advances students' mathematical knowledge and reasoning. The modeling cycle includes practices such as posing real-world problems; making assumptions; identifying constraints and variables; building mathematical solutions; and analyzing, assessing, and iterating solutions with respect to the original assumptions (COMAP and SIAM 2016). To effectively address these calls, the authors believe that teachers need collective opportunities to identify and design instructional supports that advance students' opportunities to use modeling practices. This article highlights the collective efforts of a teacher, leader, and teacher educator team to design an instructional routine that supports students in learning important modeling practices and mathematics.

This article explores how the practice-focused Studio professional learning (PL) model can provide incremental and ambitious teacher learning opportunities. We argue that when the model's structures and practices are grounded in ambitious and equitable teaching, they catalyze incremental teacher learning. Studio, like lesson study, supports teachers in considering the entailments of lessons, focusing on the live shared enactment to strengthen teaching and learning through collaborative analysis and reflection. To build our argument, we drew from two Studio projects that had shared structures of cycles of learning and routines, as well as shared practices of using rich representations and collective interpretations of teaching. While both projects' structures and practices take up ambitious and equitable teaching, they use different routines and attend to different features of equitable teaching. Building on a history of PL models, such as lesson study, which use similar structures and practices as powerful catalysts of teacher learning, we argue that Studio's structures and practices can catalyze teachers' incremental learning of ambitious and equitable teaching. We discuss the implications for future research based on this argument and for those leading PL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunities for teacher candidates to investigate and enact the work of teaching in settings of reduced complexity--what are called "approximations of practice"--offer a promising path toward preparing more ambitious and equitable mathematics teachers. However, these approaches face the risk of not preparing individuals to continue ambitious and equitable practice within the socially- and culturally-defined work they are called to do in schools. In this paper, we discuss findings from ongoing design-based research in secondary mathematics teacher education around considerations for approximations of practice that are more "responsive" to school settings. We discuss analyses of methods courses and concurrent student teaching placements. Two main design considerations have emerged around the way in which approximations of practice are tied to the content and goals of school classrooms and how they specify and explicate the structure and complexity of teaching practice. From these findings, we propose future design and research opportunities.

In this article, we report on "Researching Mathematics Leader Learning" ("RMLL"), a project designed to support leaders in learning how to facilitate robust opportunities for teachers' mathematical learning. Our two-phase research design allowed us to construct a set of videocase seminars, enact the seminar design with leaders, analyze these data, refine our seminar design, and implement a second set of seminars with a new group of leaders. We drew on the noticing literature to examine leaders' pedagogical reasoning as they discussed videocases of professional development. In this article, we demonstrate how changes in our framework for leader development and the resulting changes in the prompts and tasks shaped leader noticing in three ways: (a) accounting for the mathematical work of the facilitator and teachers in the videocase; (b) linking the mathematical work to goals for teacher learning; and (c) reasoning around the facilitator's work in advancing those learning goals. Analysis indicates that in Phase II, leader discussions were more focused on the mathematical and pedagogical work needed to advance teacher learning. Based on our research and development work with over 70 leaders, we offer a set of design principles for leader professional development.

Filling the knowledge gap in the limited research on professional development leaders is an urgent issue if teacher learning is to be improved. This research and development project is studying how leaders learn to cultivate mathematically rich professional development environments. The authors adapted two frameworks from classroom-based research--sociomathematical norms and practices for orchestrating productive discussion--to support leaders' understanding of facilitation of mathematics professional development. In this article, the authors describe the use of these frameworks in their work and argue for a third framework--the mathematical knowledge for teaching. Based on the analysis of their work, they believe that mathematics professional development leaders need to cultivate particular sociomathematical norms for teacher explanation and employ practices for orchestrating discussions to achieve the purposeful development of teachers' specialized knowledge of mathematics for teaching. (Contains 1 table and 8 notes.)

Presents case studies of four exemplary Kentucky schools to illustrate characteristics of a statewide initiative designed to support standards based educational reform. The reform emphasized professional development, increased financial support for professional development, and used a decentralized model so that local needs influenced the types of professional development activities. The article highlights three aspects of school capacity: individual teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions; professional community; and program coherence. (SM)

Describes experiences of two elementary math teachers, whose dynamic, hands-on teaching techniques were at odds with components of the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). Despite these teachers' successful efforts, the new Commonwealth Accountability and Testing System (CATS) replacing KIRIS will not contain portfolios. (12 references) (MLH)

Recent tragedies in our nation's schools--such as the Sandy Hook shooting in Newton, Connecticut and the Marysville-Pilchuck shooting near Seattle, Washington--have brought the school safety debate to the forefront of American politics. Issues of serious school violence receive intense media scrutiny. As a result, the school safety debate tends to incite emotional responses from legislatures, school districts, and parents alike. However, given that school safety concerns more than just mass shootings, emotionally charged legislation focused upon firearms is not the answer. Rather, school safety legislation needs to be school-centered. In response to the current guns-in-schools debate, this Note proposes that the proper way to address school safety is through state legislation that requires school resource officer programs and individual school safety plans, and creates a source of financial support for these increased safety measures. Recent legislation from Indiana and Connecticut serve as models for state policymakers to follow when responding to the issue of school safety through legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is, in part, the story of how Ann and Kay - who team- taught in a multigrade classroom - balanced competing priorities to create a successful reform-based mathematics [...]