The 2010 Banff Workshop on Teachers as Stakeholders in Mathematics Education Research

IntroductionMathematics education has long been concerned with the training of pre-service and inservice teachers. The origins of the field indicate that initially mathematicians like Felix Klein spent a considerable amount of time in producing coherent textbooks for teachers that focussed on the mathematical content (Sriraman & Tomer, 2008). In the last three decades teacher training has been the focus of numerous initiatives not limited to the U.S but in different parts of the world. A considerable amount of mathematics education research has reported on start-up projects with teachers, models of professional development, summer workshops, design based approaches to professional development (Lesh & Sriraman, 2010). The discussion at Banff at this workshop centred on whether or not teachers were viewed as stakeholders in the burgeoning body of reported research, and whether or not extant mathematic education research (MER) had any effect on teaching practice when viewed longitudinally. The meta-issue surrounding MER in the discussion among the participants was to make the ensuing issues more teacher inclusive than researcher oriented. Not every agenda needed to be perceived as a research agenda! The issues discussed were:Issue 1: InterestHow deeply do we expect teachers (as stakeholders) to have an interest in the process and the result of a MER project? How can MER help / address the current (de)professionalization?Issue 2: Distrust - trustHow can we work together to build trust so that our combined work can be more effective and useful for both - researchers and teachers?Issue 3: (De)ProfessionalizationTeachers are professionals but not viewed as such. Unlike other fields like medicine, law and others, apprenticeship/intemship/mentorship is under-valued.Issue 4: MER Researchers/Professionals as a ResourceNeed to look at teacher's agendas both a priori and emergent if mathematics education researchers want to be accepted within the teacher's milieu.Issue 5: TerminologyHow do we conceive professional growth of teachers ideally?Issue 6:How can the relationship (evidence, scalability, sustainability) help enhance MER teachers' learning and transformation of teaching mathematics?Themes and IssuesParticipants were broken up into smaller groups to discuss the six issues listed above. The following themes emerged as a result of the discussion among the participants.1. Teachers have interest in results that effect teacher's effectiveness.2. Research results should have an impact on students.3. Teacher educators have a direct relationship to teachers, but not to their students and teachers tend to just talk about their students' work. This makes communication difficult for the teacher educator.4. Teachers in Canada are very interested in lesson studies.5. We need a learning culture for teachers. Thereby most important is "learning in practice from practice".6. Do we have examples of evidence-based teaching?7. We do not have professionalism in math teaching when we compare it to other disciplines like medicine.After lamenting on the current state of secondary math teacher preparation, time was spent discussing issues 3 and 5, namely addressing the current de-professionalization of teachers and models of pre-service education and ongoing professional growth. It was emphasized that mathematics teachers need to consider themselves as professionals with ongoing duties to the subject matter and continually striving for better pedagogical understanding and reaching for innovation in their teaching strategies, as is supported by current research in mathematics education. They should have the confidence to consider themselves as mathematicians as well as possessing the multiple competencies required to respond to the dynamics in the classroom.From this arose an ideal vision of the pre-service education of secondary math teachers: mathematics courses that are commonly taken by math majors, including the history of mathematics in concert with specialized math education courses. …