Using Records of Practice to Bridge from Teachers’ Mathematical Problem Solving to Classroom Practice

Abstract

It is often the case that high quality mathematics education professional development involves enhancing both teachers’ content knowledge and their pedagogical skills, specifically for teaching mathematics. However, when teachers are immersed in their own learning of mathematics, they are often unaware of the facilitators’ instructional decisions and moves that influence their own learning outcomes, as well as how these might apply to their future teaching. Thus, while the teachers can appreciate their new understanding of content, they may not have added significantly to their understanding of the instructor’s pedagogical moves that facilitated their growth. As a result, teachers may leave even high quality professional development without assurance that they will be able to adjust their teaching in ways that support their own students’ meaningful learning of mathematics. In this work we describe one way in which professional development can both enhance teachers’ subject matter knowledge and help to transform these new understandings into pedagogical content knowledge; the mathematics content sessions provide the platform for reflection on pedagogy. To facilitate this reflection, a “record of practice” is created by facilitators, and thereafter utilized for participants and facilitators to identify and analyze critical moments in the mathematics content session. This paper offers two specific examples of records of practice and how they were used, as well as teachers’ reactions and insights. It also discusses various formats of records of practice, the logistics of developing them, and ends with the potential benefits of using records of practice in professional development for teachers.