PD3: Opening Classroom Doors as a Vehicle for Change
Our findings seem to suggest that teachers opening their doors and making teaching public, working together to understand student learning, can positively impact teachers' practices. We have also found system procedures and policy decisions can enable these communities to grow and develop, in particular actions that enable teachers to become leaders who feel responsible as a group for the mathematics learning that happens in their school. Such policies and procedures can also effectively prohibit successful learning communities; failed learning communities seem to encourage teachers to leave to find situations where they work. Support and buy in from administration are critical at all levels in the process; engaging teachers and giving them confidence to share what they do in their own classrooms is time consuming work that demands patience and understanding from district supervisors and from the STEM faculty. A major concern is how to sustain these communities and to insure that teachers keep working together for the common benefit of their students. A carefully designed research program would help us as a field identify the central components of what makes learning communities focused on sharing practice successful and in particular, to identify the role of STEM faculty is in supporting and guiding the teachers in their discussions about both mathematics and how it is taught. What works and what does not and why are questions to be answered if we are to have a systematic and reliable approach to creating communities of teachers who collectively examine and reflect on their teaching as a vehicle for improving student learning.
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