The Problem-Solving Cycle: A Model to Support the Development of Teachers' Professional Knowledge

This article focuses on the Problem-Solving Cycle (PSC), a model of professional development designed to assist teachers in supporting their students' mathematical reasoning. Each PSC is a series of three interrelated workshops in which teachers share a common mathematical and pedagogical exper...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mathematical thinking and learning 2007-07, Vol.9 (3), p.273-303
Main Authors: Koellner, Karen, Jacobs, Jennifer, Borko, Hilda, Schneider, Craig, Pittman, Mary E., Eiteljorg, Eric, Bunning, Kim, Frykholm, Jeffrey
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognition & reasoning
Educational Change
Knowledge
Mathematics education
Mathematics Instruction
Mathematics Skills
Mathematics Teachers
Mathematics teaching
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Problem Solving
Professional Development
Teacher improvement
Teaching Methods
Teaching models
Workshops
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Summary:This article focuses on the Problem-Solving Cycle (PSC), a model of professional development designed to assist teachers in supporting their students' mathematical reasoning. Each PSC is a series of three interrelated workshops in which teachers share a common mathematical and pedagogical experience, organized around a rich mathematical task. Throughout the workshops, teachers delve deeply into issues involving mathematical content, pedagogy, and student thinking as they pertain to the selected task. We analyze this professional development model in relation to the ways it supports the development of content and pedagogical content knowledge. We highlight the ways in which specific knowledge strands are foregrounded during each of the three PSC workshops, while also demonstrating their interconnectedness. The improvement of students' opportunities to learn mathematics depends fundamentally on teachers' skill and knowledge. No curriculum or framework is self-enacting, nostudents self-teaching. Moreover, teachers are often expected to teach mathematical topics and skills in ways substantially different from the ways in which they themselves learned that content... Hence, if students' learning is to improve, teachers' professional learning opportunities are key. ( Boaler & Humphreys, 2005 ) The professional development program featured in this article is one component of a larger research project entitled Supporting the Transition from Arithmetic to Algebraic Reasoning (STAAR). STAAR is supported by NSF Proposal No. 0115609 through the Interagency Educational Research Initiative (IERI). The views shared in this article are ours, and do not necessarily represent those of IERI.
ISSN:1098-6065
1532-7833
DOI:10.1080/10986060701360944