Professional Development for Administrators

Much current education reform is discipline-based and forwarded by professional organizations within the disciplines, such as NCTM. In the effort to improve children’s understanding, these reform efforts focus attention on the need to help teachers deepen their knowledge of the subject they teach, develop new ideas about the nature of learning, and enact new instructional practices that can facilitate rigorous student thinking as well as mastery of mathematical facts and prodedures.

For such reforms to take hold nationally and have lasting effects within schools and districts, administrative support, on a broad scale, also is needed. Our program of work with administrators investigates how administrators’ understanding of the nature of mathematics, learning, and teaching affects their interpretation and enactment of a variety of administrative practices related to instruction. This work takes the form of developing instructional materials for use with administrators, conducting research on the links between administrators’ knowledge and their practice, and publishing papers on this work.

Lenses on Learning courses

Two year-long courses for school and district administrators provide these administrators with the opportunity to think through ideas about mathematics, learning, teaching, and various aspects of instructional leadership.

The first course, Lenses on Learning: A New Focus on Mathematics and School Leadership, provides a broad overview of fundamental ideas about mathematics, learning, and teaching, and in-depth study of professional development for teachers,and classroom observation and teacher supervision. This course is currently available from Pearson Learning. Ordering information can also be downloaded here.

The second course, Lenses on Learning - Supervision: Focusing on Mathematical Thinking is a year-long course that seeks to make possible better alignment between supervisory practices and the changes that are taking place in mathematics classrooms guided by the NCTM’s Principles and Standards of School Mathematics. LOL Supervision Ordering information can be found at Pearson Learning or can be downloaded here.

A third Lenses on Learning course for secondary leadership teams is currently under development. Click here for more details.

Lenses on Learning Facilitator Institutes

EDC provides facilitator training for those who would like to teach the Lenses courses in their areas. Information on the Lenses on Learning Supervision Institute, which focuses on the Lenses on Learning - Supervision: Focusing on Mathematical Thinking curriculum, information can be found here.

Research

We also conduct research on the relationship between administrators’ knowledge of mathematics, learning, and teaching and various aspects of their administrative practice. Research projects include:

Linking New Ideas to Practice, in which we study how 5 elementary principals connect new ideas about mathematics, learning, and teaching to the decisions and actions that constitute the practice of instructional leadership in their schools.

Leadership Content Knowledge: What it is and how it affects administrators’ practice of classroom observation and teacher supervision This research investigates the content knowledge (i.e. the ideas about mathematics, learning, and teaching) that elementary principals use in the administrative practice of classroom observation and teacher supervision. It also explores how principals’ ideas about the nature of learning affect how they attend to sociological dimensions of their practice, such as the way they view the organizational, social and political contexts of their work, and how this combines with their content knowledge to shape actual administrative practice.

Leadership Content Knowledge and Mathematics Instructional Quality in the MSPs. This is a large-scale national study of the leadership content knowledge of elementary and middle school principals in MSP districts.

Mathematics Leadership Program

The Mathematics Leadership Program is a collaboration between the Developing Mathematical Ideas project (DMI), the Lenses on Learning project (LOL), and the Professional Development for Coaching project (PDC). It is designed to help school systems provide coordinated professional development for educators with various responsibilities - teacher leaders, coaches, administrators, and others who support elementary and middle school mathematics. The program consists of several summer institutes, each tailored to the roles and responisbilities of its audience. More information can be found at http://www.edc.org/MLP.

Research Papers & Books

Nelson, B.S. & Sassi, A (2005). The effective principal: Instructional readership for high quality learning. New York, Teachers College Press. This recent book reports on research about how principals' instructional leadership is affected by their own knowledge and beliefs about learning, teaching, and mathematics. Click here for more information and how to order.

A number of research papers have been written by CDT staff members. Click here to view the list and download PDFs where applicable.