Sociomathematical Norms In Professional Development Examining Leaders' Use Of Justification And Its Implications For Practice

Leaders of professional development (PD) are asked to engage in ambitious teacher learning if current calls for mathematics reform are going to be advanced in classrooms. Researchers have shown that the effectiveness of mathematics professional development to support teacher learning is directly linked to the quality of facilitation and yet little research has focused on the actual work of PD leaders (Banilower et al., 2006; Even, 2008). In this chapter we report on findings from a leader-development project examining leaders' uses of justification as they engaged in mathematical work and connections between leaders' mathematical work and their work with students and teachers. Our findings show that leaders' uses of mathematical justification built and drew on mathematical knowledge for teaching (Ball et al., 2008). Furthermore, they spoke about how this knowledge was useful for teaching students. However, leaders had difficulty using these ideas to support the teachers with whom they worked. We discuss the implications these findings have for our future research as well as for others designing PD for leaders.