International Approaches to Professional Development for Mathematics Teachers

Chapter 8: In-Service Teacher Education: A Collaborative Experience with Non-Specialist Teachers Who Teach Mathematics

118 Chapter 8 In-Service Teacher Education: A Collaborative Experience with Non-Specialist Teachers Who Teach Mathematics1 Nielce Meneguelo Lobo da Costa Introduction This chapter reports on research on an in-service teacher education program involving primary-level educators exploring mathematical and statistical contents using computers. The research was part of a broader study whose aim was to identify the characteristics of a pedagogical educational process that contributes to the “development” of teaching practice. Development here is understood as the way in which teachers reorganize—or adapt— their didactic practices through reflection, action, and new reflection on their teaching practices. Therefore, the research intended to answer the following question: what are the main factors that contribute to the development of teaching practice in an in-service teacher education process using computers as a tool in the construction of learning situations? The investigation considers the educational process of teachers as a continuous learning process throughout their lifetimes. In examining the several forms of teacher education programs and their paradigms, we can notice that they are not autonomous; as Pérez Gómez (1997) says, they are in fact contextualized, and, among other things, their guidelines depend on how they conceive of education and curriculum. This means that there are different ways of understanding educational practices related to various forms of teacher education programs. Collaboration with Non-Specialist Teachers || 119 The educational program model chosen is that of “practical reflection for social reconstruction” (Pérez Gómez, 1997), in which the reflective practice concept is enlarged to consider, besides the reflection in action and the reflection on action, in the sense of Schön (1983), the reflection on the reconstruction of situations in which the action is produced, so that teachers can reconstruct for themselves (as teachers) the situations and the underlying educational assumptions. In this model, there are two different theoretical perspectives. The first one refers to programs that advocate political engagement to promote equality, justice, and social emancipation. The second one, used in this research, refers to action-based investigation and comprehension-intended, which embraces the idea that the process of in-service teacher education is oriented by democratic methods and principles , without seeing the teacher acting as a political subject. In this chapter, I will focus on the collaborative experience of a group of teachers engaged in the latter perspective. The Research and the In-Service Teacher Education Program A work team called Action Group formed by four university researchers2 and five teachers in a public school in São Paulo State, Brazil, was part of an in-service educational program held in the school. The research actors were the principal, Hydrangea; the pedagogical coordinator, Violet; and three ordinary primary teachers, Rose, Margaret, and Orchid,3 all engaged as teacher educators for all the school teachers. The Action Group met over twenty months on a weekly basis. The sessions focused on the creation of materials for the classroom, on learning situations for students and teachers, and on the elaboration and realization of some workshops with pupils and other teachers. They also involved joint reflection on the learning process. During these meetings and throughout the whole project, members of the Action Group dealt with mathematical concepts and main statistical principles while analyzing computer databases specifically developed for the research actors’ context. Qualitative research characterized as co-generative action-based investigation among collaborative groups was developed in this in-service educational approach. Greenwood and Levin (2000, p. 96) define co-generative action-based investigation as research built on professional researcher-stakeholders ’ collaboration and aimed at developing new knowledge. This type of action research is grounded in the following characteristics: 120 || Professional Development of Mathematics Teachers 1. Participants and researchers co-generate knowledge through collaborative communicative processes in which all participants’ contributions are taken seriously. The inquiry process leads to the construction of new meanings. 2. It treats the diversity of experiences and capacities within the local group as an opportunity for the enrichment of the research process . 3. It produces valid research results. 4. It is rooted in context, centred on this context, and aims to solve real-life problems. The in-service teacher education program was strategically divided into four “phases” to facilitate the analyses, as described below. • Phase 1 was held in the university, and the first meetings discussed the software to be used and planned the in-service educational program to be developed for school teachers...