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 procedures.

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

Three 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.

Lenses on Learning: A New Focus on Mathematics and School Leadership

This course 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 set of professional development materials is currently available from Pearson Learning.

Module 1 – Instructional Leadership in Mathematics

Facilitator Book – ISBN 0-7690-3023-8
Readings – ISBN 0-7690-3024-6

Module 2 – Teacher Learning for Mathematics Instruction

Facilitator Book – ISBN 0-7690-3027-0
Readings – ISBN 0-7690-3028-9

Module 3 – Observing in Today’s Mathematics Classroom

Facilitator Book – ISBN 0-7690-3031-9
Readings – ISBN 0-7690-3032-7

Lenses on Learning - Supervision: Focusing on Mathematical Thinking

This 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. These professional development materials are currently available from Pearson Learning.

Facilitator Book - ISBN 0-7652-7028-5
Readings - ISBN 0-7652-7029-3

Lenses on Learning Secondary: Team Leadership for Mathematics in Middle and High Schools

A third Lenses on Learning course, Secondary Lenses on Learning: Team Leadership for Mathematics in Middle and High Schools, will become available through Corwin Press in May 2009. These professional development materials are designed to support leadership for middle and high schools that are grappling with raised expectations for student enrollment in algebra and for addressing inequitable student achievement in mathematics.

Please contact Catherine Miles Grant to be added to the contact list for publications news for Secondary Lenses on Learning.

Lenses on Learning Facilitator Institutes

EDC provides facilitator training for those who would like to teach the Lenses on Learning courses in their areas.

Information on the Lenses on Learning with a Focus on Systems facilitator institute (offered through the Mathematics Leadership Program at Mount Holyoke College, July 19-31) can be found here, or contact Catherine Miles Grant. This institute is designed to prepare pairs of mathematics leaders to facilitate Secondary Lenses on Learning seminars.

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.
Leadership Content Knowledge for Mathematics of Secondary Administrators. This study of the LCK for mathematics of secondary-level administrators includes analysis of the roles that administrators play with respect to the math program in their schools and districts and associates their LCK for mathematics with those functions. 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 responsibilities of its audience. Information about the MLP’s 2009 summer institute offerings can be found at http://www.edc.org/MLP/summer2009.html

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.