Professional Learning Leading to Perspective and Practice Changes: An Integrated Model for Math Education Professional Development

The purpose of the action research was to guide the teachers’ practice and development and explore professional results of the approach. This paper presents and analyzes findings from the five teacher participants' interviews, their reflections, and their artifacts/assignments to reveal the scope and nature of the changes using transformative learning as a framework. Introduction and Overview At a multi-disciplinary public university in metropolitan New York, several math education classes are taught the strategies of integrating math manipulatives, student talk-aloud, modeling, and mathematical concepts. This integrated, constructivist, and innovative approach has evolved over several years of formative development in order to achieve greater impact on teacher practice. The adult learning theory of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1990, 2000) was critical in providing a foundational framework for the research, analysis and interpretation. The specific research questions studied are: (1) Can a math education graduate course be designed which effectively incorporates elements of innovative, effective teaching strategies, action research and reflective practice while facilitating opportunities for teacher professionalization and potential transformation? (2) Is teacher understanding of student learning changed when they engage in action research study of innovative math education learning strategies? (3) If so, what changes do teachers experience as they engage in these experiences? (4) What additional characteristics become evident among the teacher educators? This research's significance is a new and effective model for the education of math educators which supports development of self-efficacy, professional leadership, and research, and professional learning perspectives. Theoretical Framework Integrated, Constructivist Approach for Foundational Algebra Thinking. The math education courses studied used teacher-learner interactions with a specific integrated, constructivist approach to build foundational algebra thinking. This experiential and problem solving approach builds on the work of theorists such as Dewey (1938) and von Glanz (1991), as well as current math teaching models (Fosnot & Dolk, 2001). This instructional model also includes two other essential points (1) Teachers discover the math learning needs of students and (2) Students learn to articulate their math learning needs. There are several unique perspectives of students’ math learning in this model, and the foundation builds upon 21st century learning and NCTM principles (2000). It dovetails with Lyublinskaya and Kerekes’ (2009) approach to introduce problem solving, internalize number sense and facilitate the development of learners as agents of their learning. These math education elements inform and are transferable to ABE learning. Teacher Professional Development as Transformative Learning Opportunities. Research has revealed strategies for facilitating change of teacher practice and perspective (King, 2002, 2009; Kitchenham, 2006); this study extends these efforts to explore the impact of action