10

DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY IN TEACHING

MATHEMATICS
In the previous chapter, we examined teaching for mathematical
proficiency. We now turn our attention to what it takes to develop proficiency
in teaching mathematics. Proficiency in teaching is related to effectiveness:
consistently helping students learn worthwhile mathematical content.
Proficiency also entails versatility: being able to work effectively with a wide
variety of students in different environments and across a range of
mathematical content.

What Does It Take to Teach for Mathematical Proficiency?

Teaching in the ways portrayed in chapter 9 is a complex practice that

draws on a broad range of resources. Despite the common myth that
teaching is little more than common sense or that some people are just
born teachers, effective teaching practice can be learned. In this chapter,
we consider what teachers need to learn and how they can learn it.

Despite the common myth that teaching is little more than common sense
or that some people are just born teachers, effective teaching practice can
be learned.

First, what does it take to be proficient at mathematics teaching? If their

students are to develop mathematical proficiency, teachers must have a
clear vision of the goals of instruction and what proficiency means for the
specific mathematical content they are teaching. They need to know the
mathematics they teach as well as the horizons of that mathematics—
where it can lead and where their students are headed with it. They need to
be able to use their knowledge flexibly in practice to appraise and adapt
instructional materials, to represent the content in honest and accessible
ways, to plan and conduct instruction, and to assess what students are
learning. Teachers need to be able to hear and see expressions of
students’ mathematical ideas and to design

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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A Chinese teacher on how a profound understanding of

fundamental mathematics is attained
One thing is to study whom you are teaching, the other thing is to study the knowledge you
are teaching. If you can interweave the two things together nicely, you will succeed….
Believe me, it seems to be simple when I talk about it, but when you really do it, it is very
complicated, subtle, and takes a lot of time. It is easy to be an elementary school teacher,
but it is difficult to be a good elementary school teacher.

SOURCE: Ma, 1999, p. 136. Used by permission from Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

appropriate ways to respond. A teacher must interpret students’ written

work, analyze their reasoning, and respond to the different methods they
might use in solving a problem. Teaching requires the ability to see the
mathematical possibilities in a task, sizing it up and adapting it for a specific
group of students. Familiarity with the trajectories along which fundamental
mathematical ideas develop is crucial if a teacher is to promote students’
movement along those trajectories. In short, teachers need to muster and
deploy a wide range of resources to support the acquisition of
mathematical proficiency.

In the next two sections, we first discuss the knowledge base needed for
teaching mathematics and then offer a framework for looking at proficient
teaching of mathematics. In the last two sections, we discuss four
programs for developing proficient teaching and then consider how
teachers might develop communities of practice.

The Knowledge Base for Teaching Mathematics

Three kinds of knowledge are crucial for teaching school mathematics:

knowledge of mathematics, knowledge of students, and knowledge of
instructional practices.1 These can be seen in the instructional triangle (Box
9–1 in chapter 9 and below).2 Mathematics and students are two of the
triangle’s vertices, and instructional practices are the interactions portrayed
by the arrows.

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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Mathematical knowledge includes knowledge of mathematical facts, concepts,

procedures, and the relationships among them; knowledge of the ways that
mathematical ideas can be represented; and knowledge of mathematics as
a discipline—in particular, how mathematical knowledge is produced, the
nature of discourse in mathematics, and the norms and standards of
evidence that guide argument and proof. In our use of the term, knowledge
of mathematics includes consideration of the goals of mathematics
instruction and provides a basis for discriminating and prioritizing those
goals. Knowing mathematics for teaching also entails more than knowing
mathematics for oneself. Teachers certainly need to be able to understand
concepts correctly and perform procedures accurately, but they also must
be able to understand the conceptual foundations of that knowledge. In the
course of their work as teachers, they must understand mathematics in
ways that allow them to explain and unpack ideas in ways not needed in
ordinary adult life. The mathematical sensibilities they hold matter in
guiding their decisions and interpretations of students’ mathematical efforts.
Knowledge of students and how they learn mathematics includes general
knowledge of how various mathematical ideas develop in children over time
as well as specific knowledge of how to determine where in a
developmental trajectory a child might be. It includes familiarity with the
common difficul-

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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ties that students have with certain mathematical concepts and procedures,
and it encompasses knowledge about learning and about the sorts of
experiences, designs, and approaches that influence students’ thinking and
learning.

Knowledge of instructional practice includes knowledge of curriculum,

knowledge of tasks and tools for teaching important mathematical ideas,
knowledge of how to design and manage classroom discourse, and
knowledge of classroom norms that support the development of
mathematical proficiency. Teaching entails more than knowledge, however.
Teachers need to do as well as to know. For example, knowledge of what
makes a good instructional task is one thing; being able to use a task
effectively in class with a group of sixth graders is another. Understanding
norms that support productive classroom activity is different from being
able to develop and use such norms with a diverse class.

Knowledge of Mathematics
Because knowledge of the content to be taught is the cornerstone of
teaching for proficiency, we begin with it. There is a substantial body of
research on teachers’ mathematical knowledge, and teachers’ knowledge
of mathematics is prominent in discussions of how to improve mathematics
instruction. Improving teachers’ mathematical knowledge and their capacity
to use it to do the work of teaching is crucial in developing students’
mathematical proficiency.
Many recent studies have revealed that U.S. elementary and middle school
teachers possess a limited knowledge of mathematics, including the
mathematics they teach. The mathematical education they received, both
as K-12 students and in teacher preparation, has not provided them with
appropriate or sufficient opportunities to learn mathematics. As a result of
that education, teachers may know the facts and procedures that they
teach but often have a relatively weak understanding of the conceptual
basis for that knowledge. Many have difficulty clarifying mathematical ideas
or solving problems that involve more than routine calculations.3 For
example, virtually all teachers can multiply multidigit numbers, but several
researchers have found that many prospective and practicing elementary
school teachers cannot explain the basis for multidigit multiplication using
place-value concepts and the underlying properties for adding and
multiplying.4 In another study,5 teachers of fourth through sixth graders
scored over 90% on items testing common decimal calculations, but fewer
than half could find a number between 3.1 and 3.11.

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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Teachers frequently regard mathematics as a fixed body of facts and
procedures that are learned by memorization, and that view carries over
into their instruction. Many have little appreciation of the ways in which
mathematical knowledge is generated or justified. Preservice teachers, for
example, have repeatedly been shown to be quite willing to accept a series
of instances as proving a mathematical generalization.6 Nowhere in their
education have they had opportunities to study and experience the nature
and role of justification in mathematics, a notion central to developing
mathematical knowledge.

Although teachers may understand the mathematics they teach in only a

superficial way, simply taking more of the standard college mathematics
courses does not appear to help matters. The evidence on this score has
been consistent, although the reasons have not been adequately explored.
For example, a study of prospective secondary mathematics teachers at
three major institutions showed that, although they had completed the
upper-division college mathematics courses required for the mathematics
major, they had only a cursory understanding of the concepts underlying
elementary mathematics.7The mathematics of the elementary and middle
school curriculum is not trivial, and the underlying concepts and structures
are worthy of serious, sustained study by teachers. To develop prospective
teachers’ understanding of the mathematics they will teach, careful
attention must be given to identifying the mathematics that teachers need
in order to teach effectively, articulating the ways in which they must use it
in practice and what that implies for their opportunities to learn
mathematics. This sort of attention to teachers’ mathematical knowledge
and its central role in practice is crucial to ensure that their study of
mathematics provides teachers with mathematical knowledge useful to
teaching well.

Teachers’ mathematical knowledge and student

achievement. Conventional wisdom asserts that student achievement
must be related to teachers’ knowledge of their subject. That wisdom is
contained in adages such as “You cannot teach what you don’t know.” For
the better part of a century, researchers have attempted to find a positive
relation between teacher content knowledge and student achievement. For
the most part, the results have been disappointing: Most studies have failed
to find a strong relationship between the two.

Many studies, however, have relied on crude measures of these variables.

The measure of teacher knowledge, for example, has often been the
number of mathematics courses taken or other easily documented data
from college

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
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Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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transcripts. Such measures do not provide an accurate index of the specific
mathematics that teachers know or of how they hold that knowledge.
Teachers may have completed their courses successfully without achieving
mathematical proficiency. Or they may have learned the mathematics but
not know how to use it in their teaching to help students learn. They may
have learned mathematics that is not well connected to what they teach or
may not know how to connect it. Similarly, many of the measures of student
achievement used in research on teacher knowledge have been
standardized tests that focus primarily on students’ procedural skills. Some
evidence suggests that there is a positive relationship between teachers’
mathematical knowledge and their students’ learning of advanced
mathematical concepts.8 There seems to be no association, however,
between how many advanced mathematics courses a teacher takes and
how well that teacher’s students achieve overall in mathematics.9 In
general, empirical evidence regarding the effects of teachers’ knowledge of
mathematics content on student learning is still rather sparse.

In the National Longitudinal Study of Mathematical Abilities (NLSMA),

conducted during the 1960s and still today the largest study of its kind,
there was essentially no association between students’ achievement and
the number of credits a teacher had in mathematics at the level of calculus
or beyond.10 Commenting on the findings from NLSMA and a number of
other studies of teacher knowledge, the director of NLSMA later said,

It is widely believed that the more a teacher knows about his subject
matter, the more effective he will be as a teacher. The empirical literature
suggests that this belief needs drastic modification and in fact suggests that
once a teacher reaches a certain level of understanding of the subject
matter, then further understanding contributes nothing to student
achievement.11

The notion that there is a threshold of necessary content knowledge for

teaching is supported by the findings of another study in 1994 that used
data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY).12 There was a
notable increase in student performance for each additional mathematics
course their teachers had taken, yet after the fifth course there was little
additional benefit.13

Data from the 1996 NAEP on teachers’ college major rather than the
number of courses they had taken provide a contrast to the general trend of
this line of research. The NAEP data revealed that eighth graders taught by
teachers who majored in mathematics outperformed those whose teachers

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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majored in education or some other field. Fourth graders taught by
teachers who majored in mathematics education or in education tended to
outperform those whose teachers majored in a field other than education.14

Although studies of teachers’ mathematical knowledge have not

demonstrated a strong relationship between teachers’ mathematical
knowledge and their students’ achievement, teachers’ knowledge is still
likely a significant factor in students’ achievement. That crude measures of
teacher knowledge, such as the number of mathematics courses taken, do
not correlate positively with student performance data, supports the need to
study more closely the nature of the mathematical knowledge needed to
teach and to measure it more sensitively.

The persistent failure of the many efforts to show strong, definitive relations
between teachers’ mathematical knowledge and their effectiveness does
not imply that mathematical knowledge makes no difference in teaching.
The research, however, does suggest that proposals to improve
mathematics instruction by simply increasing the number of mathematics
courses required of teachers are not likely to be successful. As we discuss
in the sections that follow, courses that reflect a serious examination of the
nature of the mathematics that teachers use in the practice of teaching do
have some promise of improving student performance.

Teachers need to know mathematics in ways that enable them to help

students learn. The specialized knowledge of mathematics that they need
is different from the mathematical content contained in most college
mathematics courses, which are principally designed for those whose
professional uses of mathematics will be in mathematics, science, and
other technical fields. Why does this difference matter in considering the
mathematical education of teachers? First, the topics taught in upper-level
mathematics courses are often remote from the core content of the K-12
curriculum. Although the abstract mathematical ideas are connected, of
course, basic algebraic concepts or elementary geometry are not what
prospective teachers study in a course in advanced calculus or linear
algebra. Second, college mathematics courses do not provide students
with opportunities to learn either multiple representations of mathematical
ideas or the ways in which different representations relate to one another.
Advanced courses do not emphasize the conceptual underpinnings of
ideas needed by teachers whose uses of mathematics are to help others
learn mathematics.15 Instead, the study of college mathematics involves the
increasing compression of elementary ideas into the more and more
powerful and abstract forms needed by those whose professional uses of
mathematics will be in scientific domains. Third, advanced mathematical

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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study entails using elementary concepts and procedures without much
conscious attention to their meanings or implications, thus reinforcing the
making of prior learning routine in the service of more advanced work.
While this approach is important for the education of mathematicians and
scientists, it is at odds with the kind of mathematical study needed by
teachers.

Consider the proficiency teachers need with algorithms. The power of

computational algorithms is that they allow learners to calculate without
having to think deeply about the steps in the calculation or why the
calculations work. That frees up the learners’ thinking so that they can
concentrate on the problem they are trying to use the calculation to solve
rather than having to worry about the details of the calculation. Over time,
people tend to forget the reasons a procedure works or what is entailed in
understanding or justifying a particular algorithm. Because the algorithm
has become so automatic, it is difficult to step back and consider what is
needed to explain it to someone who does not understand. Consequently,
appreciating children’s difficulties in learning an algorithm can be very
difficult for adults who are fluent with that algorithm.
The necessary compression of ideas in the course of mathematical study
also shortchanges teachers’ mathematical needs. Most advanced
mathematics classes engage students in taking ideas they have already
learned and using them to construct increasingly powerful and abstract
concepts and methods. Once theorems have been proved, they can be
used to prove other theorems. It is not necessary to go back to foundational
concepts to learn more advanced ideas. Teaching, however, entails
reversing the direction followed in learning advanced mathematics. In
helping students learn, teachers must take abstract ideas and unpack them
in ways that make the basic underlying concepts visible.16 For example,
most adults have lost sight of the fact that there are different interpretations
of division. For adults, division is an operation on numbers. Division,
however, is rooted in quite different physical situations, and distinctions
among those situations are important for understanding children’s thinking,
developing their understanding of the meaning of division, and helping
them apply that understanding to solve problems.17 For example, although
both of the following problems can be represented as dividing 24 by 6,
young children think about them in very different ways and use quite
different strategies to solve them:18

Jane has 24 cookies. She wants to put 6 cookies on each plate. How many plates
will she need?

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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Jeremy has 24 cookies. He wants to put all the cookies on 6 plates. If he puts the
same number of cookies on each plate, how many cookies will he put on each
plate?

These two problems correspond to the measurement and sharing models

of division, respectively, that were discussed in chapter 3. Young children
using counters solve the first problem by putting 24 counters in piles of 6
counters each. They solve the second by partitioning the 24 counters into 6
groups. In the first case the answer is the number of groups; in the second,
it is the number in each group. Until the children are much older, they are
not aware that, abstractly, the two solutions are equivalent. Teachers need
to see that equivalence so that they can understand and anticipate the
difficulties children may have with division.

To understand the sense that children are making of arithmetic problems,

teachers must understand the distinctions children are making among
those problems and how the distinctions might be reflected in how the
children think about the problems. The different semantic contexts for each
of the operations of arithmetic is not a common topic in college
mathematics courses, yet it is essential for teachers to know those contexts
and be able to use their knowledge in instruction. The division example
illustrates a different way of thinking about the content of courses for
teachers—a way that can make those courses more relevant to the
teaching of school mathematics.

A recent study indicates that teachers’ performance on mathematical tasks

that have been set in the context of teaching practice is positively related to
student achievement.19 In the study, teachers’ ability to interpret four
student responses to a ratio problem and to determine which were correct
was strongly related to their students’ mathematics achievement.

Teachers’ mathematical knowledge and their teaching

practice. Conventional wisdom holds that a teacher’s knowledge of
mathematics is linked to how the teacher teaches. Teachers are unlikely to
be able to provide an adequate explanation of concepts they do not
understand, and they can hardly engage their students in productive
conversations about multiple ways to solve a problem if they themselves
can only solve it in a single way.

In the last 15 years, researchers have investigated how teachers’

mathematical knowledge shapes the way they teach. Most of the
investigations have been case studies, almost all involving fewer than 10
teachers, and most only one to three teachers. In general, the researchers
found that teachers

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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with a relatively weak conceptual knowledge of mathematics tended to
demonstrate a procedure and then give students opportunities to practice
it. Not surprisingly, these teachers gave the students little assistance in
developing an understanding of what they were doing.20 When the teachers
did try to provide a clear explanation and justification, they were not able to
do so.21 In some cases, their inadequate conceptual knowledge resulted in
their presenting incorrect procedures.22

Some of the same studies contrasted the teaching practices of teachers

with low levels of mathematical knowledge with the teaching practices of
teachers who had a better command of mathematics. These studies
indicate that a strong grasp of mathematics made it possible for teachers to
understand and use constructively students’ mathematical solutions,
explanations, and questions.23 Several researchers found, however, that
some teachers with strong conceptual knowledge did not necessarily use
that knowledge to understand their students’ mathematical explanations,
preferring instead to impose their own explanations.24

Knowledge of Students
Knowledge of students includes both knowledge of the particular students
being taught and knowledge of students’ learning in general. Knowing
one’s own students includes knowing who they are, what they know, and
how they view learning, mathematics, and themselves. The teacher needs
to know something of each student’s personal and educational background,
especially the mathematical skills, abilities, and dispositions that the
student brings to the lesson. The teacher also needs to be sensitive to the
unique ways of learning, thinking about, and doing mathematics that the
student has developed. Each student can be seen as located on a path
through school mathematics, equipped with strengths and weaknesses,
having developed his or her own approaches to mathematical tasks, and
capable of contributing to and profiting from each lesson in a distinctive
way.

Teachers also need a general knowledge of how students think—the

approaches that are typical for students of a given age and background,
their common conceptions and misconceptions, and the likely sources of
those ideas. Over the last decade, researchers have produced an
impressive body of evidence about how children’s thinking about various
mathematical concepts progresses over time. We have described some of
those progressions in chapters 6 through 8. Using that body of evidence,
researchers have also

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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studied how teachers’ knowledge of students’ mathematical thinking is
related to how they teach and to how well their students achieve.

From the many examples of misconceptions to which teachers need to be

sensitive, we have chosen one: An important mathematical notion that
poses a major stumbling block when students are moving from arithmetic to
algebra is the role played by “=,” the sign for equality.25 As we discussed
in chapter 8, many if not most elementary school children have the
misconception that the equality sign is a signal to do something, to carry
out the calculation that precedes it.26 The number immediately after the
equal sign is seen as the answer to the calculation. For example, in the
number sentence 8+4=□+5, many students would put 12 in the box.
Children can develop this impression because that is how the notation is
often described in the elementary school curriculum and most of their
practice exercises fit that pattern. Few teachers realize the degree of their
students’ misunderstanding of such sentences.27 Moreover, although most
teachers have some idea that equality is a relation between two numbers,
few realize how important it is that students understand equality as a
relation, and few consider this need for understanding when they use the
equals sign.

Knowledge of Classroom Practice

Knowing classroom practice means knowing what is to be taught and how
to plan, conduct, and assess effective lessons on that mathematical
content. It includes a knowledge of learning goals as expressed in the
curriculum and a knowledge of the resources at one’s disposal for helping
students reach those goals. It also includes skill in organizing one’s class to
create a community of learners and in managing classroom discourse and
learning activities so that everyone is engaged in substantive mathematical
work. We have discussed these matters in chapter 9. This type of
knowledge is gained through experience in classrooms and through
analyzing and reflecting on one’s own practice and that of others.

In the sections that follow, we consider how to develop an integrated

corpus of knowledge of the types discussed in this section. First, however,
we need to clarify our stance on the relation between knowledge and
practice. We have discussed the kinds of knowledge teachers need if they
are to teach for mathematical proficiency. Although we have used the
term knowledge throughout, we do not mean it exclusively in the sense
of knowing about. Teachers must also know how to use their knowledge in
practice. Teachers’ knowledge is of value only if they can apply it to their
teaching; it cannot be

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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divorced from practice. Effective programs of teacher preparation and
professional development cannot stop at simply engaging teachers in
acquiring knowledge; they must challenge teachers to develop, apply, and
analyze that knowledge in the context of their own classrooms so that
knowledge and practice are integrated.

Proficient Teaching of Mathematics

In chapter 4 we identified five components or strands of mathematical

proficiency. From that perspective, successful learning is characterized by
comprehension of ideas; ready access to skills and procedures; an ability
to formulate and solve problems; a capacity to reflect on, evaluate, and
adapt one’s knowledge; the ability to reason from what is known to what is
wanted; and a habitual inclination to make sense of and value what is being
learned. Teaching is a complex activity and, like other complex activities,
can be conceived in terms of similar components. Just as mathematical
proficiency itself involves interwoven strands, teaching for mathematical
proficiency requires similarly interrelated components. In the context of
teaching, proficiency requires:

 conceptual understanding of the core knowledge required in the practice

of teaching;
 fluency in carrying out basic instructional routines;
 strategic competence in planning effective instruction and solving
problems that arise during instruction;
 adaptive reasoning in justifying and explaining one’s instructional
practices and in reflecting on those practices so as to improve them;
and a
 productive disposition toward mathematics, teaching, learning, and the
improvement of practice.

Like the strands of mathematical proficiency, these components of

mathematical teaching proficiency are interrelated. In this chapter we
discuss the problems entailed in developing a proficient command of
teaching. In the previous section we discussed issues relative to the
knowledge base needed to develop proficiency across all components.
Now we turn to specific issues that arise in the context of the components.

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Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
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Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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Understanding of Core Knowledge
It is not sufficient that teachers possess the kinds of core knowledge
delineated in the previous section. One of the defining features of
conceptual understanding is that knowledge must be connected so that it
can be used intelligently. Teachers need to make connections within and
among their knowledge of mathematics, students, and pedagogy.
The kinds of knowledge that make a difference in teaching practice and in
students’ learning are an elaborated, integrated knowledge of mathematics,
a knowledge of how students’ mathematical understanding develops, and a
repertoire of pedagogical practices that take into account the mathematics
being taught and how students learn it. The implications for teacher
preparation and professional development are that teachers need to
acquire these forms of knowledge in ways that forge connections between
them. For teachers who have already achieved some mathematical
proficiency, separate courses or professional development programs that
focus exclusively on mathematics, on the psychology of learning, or on
methods of teaching provide limited opportunities to make these
connections. Unfortunately, most university teacher preparation programs
offer separate courses in mathematics, psychology, and methods of
teaching that are taught in different departments. The difficulty of
integrating such courses is compounded when they are located in different
administrative units.

The professional development programs we discuss later in this chapter all

situate their portrayals of mathematics and children’s thinking in contexts
directly relevant to the problems teachers face daily in teaching
mathematics.28 This grounding in reality allows knowledge of mathematics
and knowledge of students to be connected in ways that make a difference
for instruction and for learning. It is not enough, however, for mathematical
knowledge and knowledge of students to be connected; both need to be
connected to classroom practice. Teachers may know mathematics, and
they may know their students and how they learn. But they also have to
know how to use both kinds of knowledge effectively in the context of their
work if they are to help their students develop mathematical proficiency.

Similarly, many inservice workshops, presentations at professional

meetings, publications for teachers, and other opportunities for teacher
learning focus almost exclusively on activities or methods of teaching and
seldom attempt to help teachers develop their own conceptual
understanding of the underlying mathematical ideas, what students
understand about those ideas, or how they learn them. Alternative forms of
teacher education and professional development that attempt to teach
mathematical content, psychology

Page 382
Suggested Citation:"10 DEVELOPING PROFICIENCY
IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS." National Research
Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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of learning, and methods of teaching need to be developed and evaluated
to see whether prospective and practicing teachers from such programs
can draw appropriate connections and apply the knowledge they have
acquired to teach mathematics effectively.

Instructional Routines
The second basic component of teaching proficiency is the development of
instructional routines. Just as students who have acquired procedural
fluency can perform calculations with numbers efficiently, accurately, and
flexibly with minimal effort, teachers who have acquired a repertoire of
instructional routines can readily draw upon them as they interact with
students in teaching mathematics. Some routines concern classroom
management, such as how to get the class started each day and
procedures for correcting and collecting homework. Other routines are
more grounded in mathematical activity. For example, teachers need to
know how to respond to a student who gives an answer the teacher does
not understand or who demonstrates a serious misconception. They need
to know how to deal with students who lack critical prerequisite skills for the
day’s lesson. Teachers need businesslike ways of dealing with situations
like these that occur on a regular basis so that they can devote more of
their attention to the more serious issues facing them. When teachers have
several ways of approaching teaching problems, they can try a different
approach if one does not work.

Researchers have shown that expert teachers have a large repertoire of

routines at their disposal.29 They can choose among a number of
approaches for teaching a given topic or responding to a situation that
arises in their classes. Novice teachers, in contrast, have a limited range of
routines and often cannot respond appropriately to situations. Expert
teachers not only have access to a range of routines, they also can apply
them flexibly, know when they are appropriate, and can adapt them to fit
different situations.

Strategic Competence
The third component of teaching proficiency is strategic competence.
Although teachers need a range of routines, teaching is very much a
problem-solving activity.30 Like other professionals, teachers are constantly
faced with decisions in planning instruction, implementing those plans, and
interacting with students.31 Useful guidelines are seldom available for
figuring out what to teach when, how to teach it, how to adapt material so
that it is appropriate for a given group of students, or how much time to
allow for an activity. On

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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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the spot, teachers need to find out what a student knows, choose how to
respond to a student’s question or statement, and decide whether to follow
a student’s idea. These are problems that every teacher faces every day,
and most do not have readymade solutions.

Conceptual understanding of the knowledge required to teach for

proficiency can help equip teachers to deal intelligently with these
problems. It is misleading to claim that teachers actually solve such
problems in the sense of solving a mathematical problem. There is never an
ideal solution to the more difficult problems of teaching, but teachers can
learn to contend with these problems in reasonable ways that take into
account the mathematics that students are to learn; what their students
understand and how they may best learn it; and representations, activities,
and teaching practices that have proven most effective in teaching the
mathematics in question or that have been effective in teaching related
topics.

Teacher education and professional development programs that take into

account the strategic decision making in teaching can help prepare
teachers to be more effective in solving instructional problems. Rather than
being designed to resolve teachers’ problems, programs of teacher
education and professional development can engage prospective and
practicing teachers in the analysis of instructional problems and potential
ways of dealing with them. Teachers can learn to recognize that teaching
involves solving problems and that they can address these problems in
reasonable and intelligent ways.

Adaptive Reasoning
The fourth component of teaching proficiency is adaptive reasoning.
Teachers can learn from their teaching by analyzing it: the difficulties their
students have encountered in learning a particular topic; what the students
have learned; how the students responded to particular representations,
questions, and activities; and the like.32 Teachers can become reflective
practitioners, and reflection is essential in improving their practice. The
focus of teachers’ reflection and the tools they use shape the nature of that
reflection and affect whether, what, and how they learn from it. Many
successful programs of teacher education and professional development
engage teachers in reflection, but the reflection, or perhaps more
appropriately the analysis, is grounded in specific examples. In those
programs, teachers engage in analyses in which they are asked to provide
evidence to justify claims and assertions. As with other complex activities,
teacher learning can be enhanced by making more visible the goals,
assumptions, and decisions involved in the practice of

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Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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teaching.33 The implications for teacher education and professional
development is that teachers engage not only in learning methods of
teaching but also in reflecting on them and justifying and explaining them in
relation to such matters as the mathematics being taught, the goals for
students, the conceptions and misconceptions that students have about the
mathematics, the difficulties they have in learning it, and the
representations that are most effective in communicating essential ideas.
One of the ways that the professional development programs described
below foster teachers’ ability to justify and explain classroom practices is
that teachers examine familiar artifacts from practice, and those artifacts
help them focus their attention and develop a common language for
discussion. In some cases the program leaders provide the artifacts; in
others the artifacts come from the teachers’ classrooms. Teachers are
often asked to pose a particular mathematical problem to their classes and
to discuss the mathematical thinking that they observe.

Productive Disposition
The final component of teaching proficiency is a productive disposition
about one’s own knowledge, practice, and learning. Just as students must
develop a productive disposition toward mathematics such that they believe
that mathematics makes sense and that they can figure it out, so too must
teachers develop a similar productive disposition. Teachers should think
that mathematics, their understanding of children’s thinking, and their
teaching practices fit together to make sense and that they are capable of
learning about mathematics, student mathematical thinking, and their own
practice themselves by analyzing what goes on in their classes. Teachers
whose learning becomes generative perceive themselves as in control of
their own learning.34 They learn by listening to their students and by
analyzing their teaching practices. Not only do they develop more
elaborated conceptions of how students’ mathematical thinking develops by
listening to their students, but they also learn mathematical concepts and
strategies from their interactions with students. The teachers become more
comfortable with mathematical ideas and ripe for a more systematic view of
the subject.

Teachers whose learning becomes generative see themselves as lifelong

learners who can learn from studying curriculum materials35 and from
analyzing their practice and their interactions with students. Programs of
teacher education and professional development that portray to the
participants that they are in control of their own learning help teachers
develop a productive dispo-

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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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sition toward learning about mathematics, student mathematical thinking,
and teaching practice. Programs that provide readymade, worked-out
solutions to teaching problems should not expect that teachers will see
themselves as in control of their own learning.

Programs to Develop Proficient Teaching

In a teacher preparation program, teachers clearly cannot learn all they

need to know about the mathematics they will teach, how students learn
that mathematics, and how to teach it effectively. Consequently, some
authorities have recommended that teacher education be seen as a
professional continuum, a career-long process.36 Hence, teachers need a
basis for ongoing learning. They need to be able to adapt to new curriculum
frameworks, new materials, advances in technology, and advances in
research on student thinking and teaching practice. They have to learn how
to learn, whether they are learning about mathematics, students, or
teaching. Teachers can continue to learn by participating in various forms
of professional development. But formal professional development
programs represent only one source for continued learning. Teachers’
schools and classrooms can also become places for teachers as well as
students to learn.37 Professional development programs that engage
teachers in inquiry in their classrooms can provide the basis for teachers’
learning to become generative so that their knowledge, conceptions, and
practice continue to grow and evolve.38

Programs of teacher education and professional development based on

research integrate the study of mathematics and the study of students’
learning so that teachers will forge connections between the two. Some of
these programs begin with mathematical ideas from the school curriculum
and ask teachers to analyze those ideas from the learners’ perspective.
Other programs use students’ mathematical thinking as a springboard to
motivate teachers’ learning of mathematics. Still others begin with teaching
practice and move toward a consideration of mathematics and students’
thinking. We consider below examples of four such program types that
represent an array of alternative approaches to developing integrated
proficiency in teaching mathematics.39

Focus an Mathematics
Some teacher preparation and professional development programs attempt
to enhance prospective and practicing teachers’ knowledge of mathematics
by having them probe more deeply fundamental ideas from elementary
school

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Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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mathematics, often through problem solving. For example, prospective
elementary school teachers may take a mathematics course that focuses,
in part, on rational numbers or proportionality rather than the usual college
algebra or calculus. Such courses are offered in many universities, but they
are seldom linked to instructional practice. The lesson depicted in Box 10–
1 comes from a course in which connections to practice are being made.

Box 10–1 Investigating Division of Fractions in a Mathematics

Course
The prospective teachers stare at the board, trying to figure out what the instructor is asking
them to do. After calculating the answer to a simple problem in the division of
fractions and recalling the old algorithm—invert and multiply—most of them
have come up with the answer, It is familiar content, and although they have not had
occasion to divide fractions recently, they feel comfortable, remembering their own
experiences in school mathematics and what they learned. But now, what are they being
asked? The instructor has challenged them to consider why they are getting what seems to
be an answer that is larger than either of the numbers in the original problem (
and ). “Doesn’t dividing make numbers smaller?” she asks. Confused, they are suddenly
stuck. None of them noticed this fact before.

The instructor proposes a new task: “See if you can make up a story problem, devise a real-
world context, or draw a picture that will go with one and three fourths divided by a half.
Can you come up with an example or a model that shows what is going on with dividing
one and three fourths by one half?”

The prospective teachers set to work, some in pairs, some alone. The instructor walks
around, watching them work, and occasionally asking a question. Most have drawn pictures
like those below:
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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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They have written problems like the following:

I have two pizzas. My little brother eats one quarter of one of them and then I have one and
three quarters pizzas left. My sister is very hungry, so we decide to split the remaining pizza
between us. We each get pieces of pizza.

One pair of students has a different problem:

I have cups of sugar. Each batch of sesame crackers takes cup of sugar. How many
batches of crackers can I make?
And another pair has envisioned filling -liter containers, starting with liters of water.

After about 10 minutes, the instructor invites students to share their problems with the rest
of the class. One student presents the pizza situation above. Most students nod
appreciatively. When a second student offers the sesame cracker problem, most nod again,
not noticing the difference. The instructor poses a question: How does each problem we
heard connect with the original computation? Are these two problems similar or different,
and does it matter?

Through discussion the students gradually come to recognize that, in the pizza problem, the
pizza has been divided in half and that the answer is in terms of fourths—that is, that the
pieces are fourths of pizzas. In the case of the sesame cracker problem, the answer of
batches is in terms of half cups of sugar. In the first instance, they have represented
division in half, which is actually division by two; in the second they have represented
division by one half.
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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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The instructor moves into a discussion of different interpretations of division: sharing and
measurement. After the students observe that the successful problems— involving the
sesame crackers and the liters of water—are measurement problems, she asks them to try to
develop a problem situation for that represents a sharing division. In other words,
could they make a sensible problem in which the is not the unit by which the whole is
being measured, but instead is the number of units into which the whole has been divided?

For homework, the instructor asks the students to try making representations for several
other division situations, which she chooses strategically, and finally asks them to select
two numbers to divide that they think are particularly good choices and to say why. She also
asks them to try to connect what they have done in class today with the familiar algorithm
of “invert and multiply.”

In this excerpt from a university mathematics course, the prospective

teachers are being asked to unpack familiar arithmetic content, to make
explicit the ideas underlying the procedures they remember and can
perform. Repeatedly throughout the course, the instructor poses problems
that have been strategically designed to expose concepts on which familiar
procedures rest.

One principle behind the instructor’s efforts is to engage the prospective

teachers in a kind of mathematical work that focuses on developing their
proficiency with the mathematical content of the elementary school
curriculum. A second principle is to link that work with larger mathematical
ideas and structures. For example, the lesson on the division of fractions is
part of a larger agenda that includes understanding division, its relationship
to fractions and to multiplication, and the meaning and representation of
operations. Moreover, throughout the development of these ideas and
connections, the prospective teachers work with whole and rational
numbers, considering how the mathematical world looks inside these
nested systems.

The overriding purpose of a course like this is to provide prospective

teachers with ample opportunities to learn fundamental ideas of school
mathematics, how they are related, and how students come to learn them.
The

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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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ways in which the prospective teachers’ opportunities to learn are designed
may at times situate the mathematical questions within apparently
pedagogical contexts (e.g., make a story problem), so that the kind of
mathematical work they do in the course helps them develop mathematical
proficiency in ways they can use in teaching. But the course is not about
how to teach, nor about how children learn. It is explicitly and deliberately a
sustained opportunity for prospective teachers to learn mathematical ideas
in ways that will equip them with mathematical resources needed in
teaching.
 Focus on Student Thinking
The successful programs that focus on mathematics and children’s thinking
are programs grounded in practice. Teachers do not learn abstract
concepts about mathematics and children. In the programs, teachers look
at problem-solving strategies of real students, artifacts of student work,
cases of real classrooms, and the like. Furthermore, the teachers in these
programs are challenged to relate what they learn to their own students
and their own instructional practices. They learn about mathematics and
students both in workshops and by interacting with their own students.
Specific opportunity is provided for the teachers to discuss with one
another how the ideas they are encountering influence their practice and
how their practice influences what they are learning. Discussions in these
programs are conducted in a spirit of supporting the teachers’ inquiry. The
analysis of children’s thinking is not presented as a fixed body of
knowledge, and the teachers engage not only in inquiry about how to apply
knowledge about students’ thinking in planning and implementing
instruction but also in inquiry to deepen their understanding of students’
thinking.40

The workshop described in Box 10–2 forms part of a professional

development program designed to help teachers develop a deeper
understanding of some critical mathematical ideas, including the equality
sign. The program, modeled after Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI),
which has proven to be a highly effective approach,41 assists teachers in
understanding how to help their students reason about number operations
and relations in ways that enhance the learning of arithmetic and promote a
smoother transition from arithmetic to algebra.42 This particular workshop
was directed at illuminating students’ misconceptions about equality and
considering how those misconceptions might be addressed.

Several features of this example of professional development are worth

noting. The teachers focus on children’s thinking about a critical
mathematical idea. Although they begin by considering how children think,
the teachers

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Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/9822.
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Box 10–2 Investigating the Concept of Equality in

a Professional Development Group
Before attending the workshop, participating teachers ask their students to find the number
that they could put in the box to make the following open-number sentence a true number
sentence: 8+4=□+5. At the workshop, the teachers share their findings with the other
participants. Fewer than 10% of the students in any teacher’s class solved the problem
correctly.* The majority of the incorrect responses were 12, with a number of responses of
17. These findings, which surprised most teachers, have led them to begin to listen to their
students, and a number of teachers have engaged their students in a discussion of the
reasons for their responses. The teachers’ experiences have precipitated a discussion in the
workshop of how students are thinking about equality and how these misconceptions might
have been acquired. The discussion generates insights about how children are thinking and
what teachers can learn by listening to their students. Although the teachers recognize the
students’ errors on this problem, however, they do not have a good idea of how they would
address the misconception.

The workshop leader introduces several true and false number sentences as a context to
challenge children’s incorrect notions of equality. Examples include 8=3+5, 17+9=36,
23=23, 17+26=27+16, and 76+7=76. The task is to decide whether the sentence is true or
false. Sometimes the decision requires calculation (e.g., 74–57=17), and sometimes it does
not (e.g., 67+96=96+67). The teachers work in small groups to construct true and false
number sentences they might use to elicit various views of equality. Using these sentences,
their students could engage in explorations that might lead to understanding equality as a
relation. The sentences could also provide opportunities for discussions about how to
resolve disagreement and develop a mathematical argument. The teachers work together to
consider how their students might respond to different number sentences and which number
sentences might produce the most fruitful discussion.

* These responses and this level of success are typical for classes ranging from grade 1
to 6.
SOURCE: Falkner, Levi, and Carpenter, 1999. Used by permission of the authors.

must also examine their own conceptions. Properties of equality that the
teachers have not usually examined carefully before emerge in their
discussions of students’ conceptions and misconceptions in using the
equals sign. The teachers also begin to ponder how notation is used and
how ideas are justified in mathematics. A central feature of their discussion
is that math-
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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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ematics and children’s thinking are set in a context that relates to their
practice. The mathematical ideas and how children think about them are
seen in classroom interactions. The problems discussed in the workshop
are problems that the teachers can and do use in their classes; the
interactions about mathematics that occur in the teachers’ classes provide
a setting for workshop discussion of mathematical ideas and children’s
thinking. The activities taking place in the workshop and in the teachers’
classrooms have the same goals. In both places the teachers engage in
inquiry to gain a deeper understanding of mathematics, students’ thinking
about that mathematics, and how to plan their instruction so as to foster the
development of students’ mathematical thinking.

Before beginning a professional development program similar to the one

described above, teachers participating in the program found that fewer
than 10% of their students at any grade demonstrated a relational concept
of equality. After one year of the program, the percentage of students in
their classes who demonstrated a relational concept of equality ranged
from 66% in first and second grades to 84% in sixth grade.43

Although these programs place a heavy emphasis on children’s thinking,

understanding children’s mathematical thinking depends upon
understanding the mathematics with which that thinking is engaged. The
programs do not deal with general theories of learning. They concentrate
instead on understanding children’s thinking in specific domains of
mathematical content. Understanding the mathematics of the domain being
studied is a prerequisite to understanding children’s thinking in that domain.
For example, to understand the different strategies that children use to
solve different problems, teachers must understand the semantic
differences between problems represented by the same operation, as
illustrated by the sharing and measurement examples of dividing cookies
described above in Box 10–1. In programs focusing on children’s
mathematical thinking, teachers learn to recognize and appreciate the
mathematical significance of children’s informal methods for solving
problems, how these methods evolve into more abstract and more powerful
methods, and how the informal methods could serve as a basis for
students to learn formal concepts and procedures with understanding.

Professional development programs focusing on helping teachers

understand both the mathematics of specific content domains and students’
mathematical thinking in that domain have consistently been found to
contribute to major changes in teachers’ instructional practices that have
resulted in significant gains in students’ achievement.44For example, in an
experimental study of CGI with first-grade teachers, teachers who had
taken a month-long

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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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workshop on children’s development of addition and subtraction concepts
taught problem solving significantly more and number facts significantly
less than did teachers who had instead taken two 2-hour workshops on
nonroutine problem solving. Students in the CGI teachers’ classes
performed as well as students in the comparison teachers’ classes on a
standardized computation test and outperformed students in the
comparison teachers’ classes on complex addition and subtraction word
problems.45After teachers have studied the development of children’s
mathematical thinking, they tend to place a greater emphasis on problem
solving, listen to their students more and know more about their students’
abilities, and provide greater opportunity for their students to use a variety
of solution methods. Gains in student achievement generally have been in
the areas of understanding and problem solving, but none of the programs
has led to a decline in computational skills, despite their greater emphasis
on higher levels of thinking.

Focus an Cases
Case examples are yet another way to build the connections between
knowledge of mathematics, knowledge of students, and knowledge of
practice. Although the cases focus on classroom episodes, the discussions
the teachers engage in as they reflect on the cases emphasize
mathematics content and student thinking. The cases involve instruction in
specific mathematical topics, and teachers analyze the cases in terms of
the mathematics content being taught and the mathematical thinking
reflected in the work the children produce and the interactions they engage
in. Cases can be presented in writing or using multiple media such as
videotapes and transcriptions of lessons. The episode in Box 10–3 is taken
from a case discussion in which the case is presented through video
recordings of lessons from an entire year that were captured on computer
disks, together with the teacher’s plans and reflections and with samples of
student work.

Notable in this example is how the teachers’ opportunities to consider

mathematical ideas—in this case, functions—are set in the context of the
use of those ideas in teaching. These teachers are probing the concept of
functions from several overlapping perspectives. They dig into the
mathematics through close work on and analysis of the task that the
teacher posed. They also explore the ideas by investigating students’ work
on the problem. And they revisit the mathematical ideas by looking carefully
at how the teacher deals with the mathematics during the lesson.

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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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Box 10–3 Investigating Mathematical Tasks Using Cases

fromReal Practice
A dozen teachers are gathered around a table. They have read a case of a teacher teaching a
lesson on functions. The written case includes the task the teacher used and a detailed
narrative account of what happened in the class as students worked on the problem. The
teacher used the following task:

Sara has made several purchases from a mail-order company. She has found that the
company charges $12.90 to ship an 8-kg package, $6.40 to ship a 3-kg package, and $9.00
to ship a 5-kg package. Sara decides that the company must be using a simple rule to
determine how much to charge for shipping. Help her figure out how much it would most
likely cost to ship a 1-kg package and how much each additional kilogram would cost.

Photocopies of students’ work are available, as are pages from the curriculum materials
being used. Before the teachers studied the case and the accompanying materials, they
solved the mathematical problem themselves.

To begin the discussion, the workshop leader asks the teachers to look closely at one
segment of the lesson in which two students are presenting solutions to the problem. She
asks them to interpret what each student did and to compare the two solutions. This request
precipitates an animated discussion in which the teachers probe the students’
representations and explanations. One teacher notes that a third student has a method that is
similar to the first student’s, but several others argue that the method is not similar. The
teachers continue to analyze the students’ thinking, with repeated careful use of the
reproductions of the students’ work. At one point one teacher raises a mathematical point,
asking whether there might be something particularly significant in one student’s idea.

The teachers launch into a discussion of the mathematics for several minutes. They note that
if the given values (weight, cost) are graphed, the points lie on the same straight line.
Reading the graph provides a solution. Also, by asking how much each additional kilogram
would cost, the problem suggests there is a constant difference that can be used in solving
it. Since the 2-kg difference between 5 kg and 3 kg is $2.60, and the 3-kg difference
between 8 kg and 5 kg is $3.90, the simplest rule would be that each additional kilogram
costs $1.30. A linear function (y=1.30x+2.50) fits the three values, and one can use constant
differences or a graph to find this function (although that is not necessary to answer the two
questions).

After a much-needed break, the leader refocuses the discussion on the teacher’s moves
throughout the episode that they have been discussing. At first, several
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teachers comment that the teacher doesn’t seem to be doing much. “She is more of a guide,”
one teacher remarks. “It is really a student-centered class.” “Is it?” asks the leader. She asks
them to analyze the text closely and try to categorize what the teacher is doing.

This discussion yields surprises for most of the teachers. Suddenly the intricate work that
the teacher is doing becomes visible. They see her posing strategic questions, using
particular aspects of the students’ solutions to focus the class discussion, providing direction
at some moments and letting the students struggle a bit at others. They begin to describe and
name the different moves she makes. One teacher becomes intrigued with how the teacher
helps students express their ideas by asking questions to support their explanations before
she asks other students to comment. It is quite clear that this is no generic skill, for the
mathematical sensitivity and knowledge entailed are quite visible throughout. Another
teacher notices how the teacher’s own mathematical knowledge seems to shape her skilled
questioning. The teachers become fascinated with what looks like an important missed
opportunity to unpack a common misconception about function. Speculating about why that
happened leads them to a productive conversation about what one might do to seize and
capitalize on the opportunity.

The session ends with the teachers agreeing to bring back one mathematical task from their
own work on functions and compare it with the task used in the case. Several are overheard
to be discussing features of this problem that seem particularly fruitful and that have them
thinking about how they frame problems for their students. The group briefly discusses
some ways to vary the problem to make it either simpler or more complex. The leader then
closes by summarizing some of the mathematical issues embedded in the task. She points
out that it is not obvious what the value of 2.50 means in the algebraic expression of the
function. It is the cost of sending a package of zero weight, an idea that does not appear
anywhere in the problem itself or in real life. She also says that it is important to understand
that x refers to whole numbers only. Finally, she notes that with a different function, the
differences might not be constant. The assumption of constant differences is one suggested
by the problem and common in situations like those involving shipping costs, but it is not
necessarily always warranted.

Studies of teachers’ learning in professional development programs that

have used classroom cases show that the teachers learned mathematics
from studying such cases. They gained a greater repertoire of ways to
represent mathematical ideas, were able to articulate connections among
mathematical ideas, and developed a deeper understanding of
mathematical structures.46

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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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As a result of their work in this program, the teachers became more likely to
bring out students’ reasoning in discussions and to invite both public and
private reflection on the students’ ideas. At least some of the teachers
continued the process of learning mathematics by examining the
mathematical work of their own students in their own classrooms.

The case-based programs that focus on classroom instruction treat the

cases as problematic situations that serve as a basis for discussion and
inquiry rather than as models of instruction for the teachers to emulate.
Teachers analyze classes not to figure out how they can do what the
teacher in the case example did; instead, the case discussions provide
models for inquiry that teachers may apply to analyze their own students’
mathematical thinking and their own teaching practices.

Focus on Lesson Study

A somewhat different approach to professional development is represented
by so-called lesson study groups, which are used in Japan (see Box 10–4).
These study groups focus on the development and refinement of one
specific mathematical lesson, called a “research lesson.” Teachers work
together to consider a specific difficulty entailed in teaching some important
piece of mathematics. They design a lesson, and one member of the group
teaches it while the others watch. Afterwards they discuss what happened
in light of their anticipations and goals. Based on this experience, the group
revises the lesson and someone else teaches it. The cycle continues of
trying the lesson, discussing and analyzing how it worked, and revising it.
Through such lesson study groups, teachers engage in very detailed
analyses of mathematics, of students’ mathematical thinking and skill, of
teaching and learning. Although the process results in a well-crafted
lesson, in the process of developing and refining the lesson, teachers work
on analyzing students’ responses and learn from and revise their own
teaching practices. Their knowledge becomes a basis for further learning
through the study of a lesson.47

Lesson study groups might follow somewhat different formats and

schedules than the one described above, but most meet regularly during
the year and focus on improving a very few lessons with clear learning
goals. Using the lesson as the unit of analysis and improvement, the
teachers are encouraged to improve their knowledge of all aspects of
teaching within the context of their own classrooms—knowledge of
mathematics, of students’ thinking, of pedagogy, of curriculum, and of
assessment. Although the year’s activity yields a collective product that can
be shared with other teachers (the group’s written report), Japanese
teachers say that the primary value of lesson study

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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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Box 10–4 The Japanese Lesson Study

Small groups of teachers form within the school around areas of common teaching interests
or responsibilities (e.g., grade-level groups in mathematics or in science). Each group
begins by formulating a goal for the year. Sometimes the goal is adapted from national-level
recommendations (e.g., improve students’ problem-solving skills) and is translated into a
more specific goal (e.g., improve students’ understanding of problems involving ratios).
The more specific goal might focus on a curriculum topic that has been problematic for
students in their classrooms. A few lessons then are identified that ordinarily deal with that
topic, and the group begins its yearlong task to improve those lessons.

Lesson study groups meet regularly, often once a week after school (e.g., 3:00 to 5:00 pm),
to develop, test, and refine the improved lessons. Some groups divide their work into three
major phases, each taking about one third of the school year. During the first phase,
teachers do research on the topic, reading and sharing relevant research reports and
collecting information from other teachers on effective approaches for teaching the topic.
During the second phase, teachers design the targeted lessons (often just one, two, or
perhaps three lessons). Important parts of the design include (a) the problems that will be
presented to students, (b) the teachers’ predictions about how students will solve the
problems, and (c) how these different solution methods are to be integrated into a
productive class discussion.
During the third phase, the lessons are tested and refined. The first test often involves one of
the group members teaching a lesson to his or her class while the other group members
observe and take notes. After the group refines the lesson, it might be tested with another
class in front of all the teachers in the school. In this case, a follow-up session is scheduled,
and the lesson study group engages their colleagues in a discussion about the lesson,
receiving feedback about its effectiveness.

The final task for the group is to prepare a report of the year’s work, including a rationale
for the approach used and a detailed plan of the lesson, complete with descriptions of the
different solution methods students are likely to present and the ways in which these can be
orchestrated into a constructive discussion.
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Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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is teacher development. Working directly on improving teaching is their
means of becoming better teachers.

Communities of Practice

Learning in ways that continue to be generative over time is best done in a

community of fellow practitioners and learners, as illustrated by the
Japanese lesson study groups. The foregoing discussion of teacher
proficiency focused on individual teachers’ knowledge, but teaching
proficiency does not easily develop and is not generally sustained in
isolation. Studies of school reform efforts suggest that professional
development is most effective when it extends beyond the individual
teacher.48 Collaboration among teachers provides support for them to
engage in the kinds of inquiry that are needed to develop teaching
proficiency. Professional development can create contexts for teacher
collaboration, provide a focus for the collaboration, and provide a common
frame for interacting with other teachers around common problems. When
teachers have opportunities to continue to participate in communities of
practice that support their inquiry, instructional practices that foster the
development of mathematical proficiency can more easily be sustained.
Professional development can create contexts for teacher collaboration,
provide a focus for the collaboration, and provide a common frame for
interacting with other teachers around common problems.

The focus of teacher groups matters for what teachers learn from their
interactions with others. When sustained work is focused on mathematics,
on students’ thinking about specific mathematical topics, or on the detailed
work of designing and enacting instruction, the resources generated for
teachers’ own practice are greater than when there is less concrete focus.
For example, general sharing, or discussion of approaches, ungrounded in
the particulars of classroom artifacts, while possibly enjoyable, less often
produces usable knowledge that can make a difference for teachers’ work.

Mathematics Specialists
Because of the specialized knowledge required to teach mathematics,
there has been increased discussion recently of the use of mathematics
specialists, particularly in the upper elementary and middle school grades.
The Learning First Alliance, comprising 12 major education groups,
recommends that mathematics teachers from grades 5 through 9 have “a
solid grounding in the coursework of grades K-12 and the teaching of
middle grades mathematics.”49 The Conference Board of the Mathematical
Sciences recommends in its draft report that mathematics in middle grades
should be taught by mathematics specialists, starting at least in the fifth
grade.50 They further recommend that teachers of middle school
mathematics have taken 21 semester

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hours of mathematics, 12 of which are on fundamental ideas of school
mathematics appropriate for middle school teachers.
Implicit in the recommendations for mathematics specialists is the notion of
the mathematics specialist in a departmental arrangement. In such
arrangements, teachers with a strong background in mathematics teach
mathematics and sometimes another subject, depending on the student
population, while other teachers in the building teach other subject areas.
Departmentalization is most often found in the upper elementary grades (4
to 6). Other models of mathematics specialists are used, particularly in
elementary schools, which rarely are departmentalized. Rather than a
specialist for all mathematics instruction, a single school-level mathematics
specialist is sometimes used. This person, who has a deep knowledge of
mathematics and how students learn it, acts as a resource for other
teachers in the school. The specialist may consult with other teachers
about specific issues, teach demonstration lessons, observe and offer
suggestions, or provide special training sessions during the year. School-
level mathematics specialists can also take the lead in establishing
communities of practice, as discussed in the previous section. Because
many districts do not have enough teachers with strong backgrounds in
mathematics to provide at least one specialist in every school, districts
instead identify district-level mathematics coaches who are responsible for
several schools. Whereas a school-level specialist usually has a regular or
reduced teaching assignment, district-level specialists often have no
classroom teaching assignment during their tenure as a district coach. The
constraint on all of the models for mathematics specialists is the limited
number of teachers, especially at the elementary level, with strong
backgrounds in mathematics. For this reason, summer leadership training
programs have been used to develop mathematics specialists.

Effective Professional Development

Perhaps the central goal of all the teacher preparation and professional
development programs is in helping teachers understand the mathematics
they teach, how their students learn that mathematics, and how to facilitate
that learning. Many of the innovative programs described in this chapter
make serious efforts to help teachers connect these strands of knowledge
so that they can be applied in practice. Teachers are expected to explain
and justify their ideas and conclusions. Teachers’ ideas are respected, and
they are encouraged to engage in inquiry. They have opportunities to
develop a productive disposition toward their own learning about teaching
that contrib-

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Council. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn
Mathematics. Washington, DC: The National Academies
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utes to their learning becoming generative. Teachers are not given
readymade solutions to teaching problems or prescriptions for practice.
Instead, they adapt what they are learning and engage in problem solving
to deal with the situations that arise when they attempt to use what they
learn.

Professional development beyond initial preparation is critical for

developing proficiency in teaching mathematics. However, such
professional development requires the marshalling of substantial
resources. One of the critical resources is time. If teachers are going
engage in inquiry, they need repeated opportunities to try out ideas and
approaches with their students and continuing opportunities to discuss their
experiences with specialists in mathematics, staff developers, and other
teachers. These opportunities should not be limited to a period of a few
weeks or months; instead, they should be part of the ongoing culture of
professional practice. Through inquiry into teaching, teacher learning can
become generative, and teachers can continue to learn and grow as
professionals.

Notes

1. Shulman, 1987.
2. Cohen and Ball, 1999, 2000.
3. Ball, 1991; Ma, 1999; Post, Harel, Behr, and Lesh, 1991; Tirosh, Fischbein, Graeber,
and Wilson, 1999.
4. Ball, 1991; Ma, 1999.
5. Post, Harel, Behr, and Lesh, 1991.
6. Ball, 1988; Martin and Harel, 1989; Simon and Blume, 1996.
7. Ball, 1990, 1991.
8. Mullens, Murnane, and Willet, 1996; but see Begle, 1972.
9. Monk, 1994.
10. Begle, 1979.
11. Begle, 1979, p. 51.
12. The Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) was conducted in the late 1980s
and early 1990s with high school sophomores and juniors. Student achievement data
were based on items developed for NAEP.
13. Monk, 1994, p. 130.
 14. Hawkins, Stancavage, and Dossey, 1998.
15. In fact, it appears that sometimes content knowledge by itself may be detrimental to
good teaching. In one study, more knowledgeable teachers sometimes overestimated
the accessibility of symbol-based representations and procedures (Nathan and
Koedinger, 2000).
16. Ball and Bass, 2000; Ma, 1999.
17. Carpenter, Fennema, and Franke, 1996; Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Empson, and
Levi, 1999; Greer, 1992.
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18. Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Empson, and Levi, 1999.

19. Rowan, Chiang, and Miller, 1997.
20. Ball, 1991; Leinhardt and Smith, 1985.
21. Borko, Eisenhart, Brown, Underhill, Jones, Agard, 1992.
22. Leinhardt and Smith, 1985; Putnam, Heaton, Prawat, and Remillard, 1992.
23. Ball, 1991; Fernandez, 1997.
24. Lubinski, Otto, Rich, and Jaberg, 1998; Thompson and Thompson, 1994, 1996.
25. Kieran, 1981; Matz, 1982.
26. Behr, Erlwanger, and Nichols,1976, 1980; Erlwanger and Berlanger, 1983; Kieran,
1981; Saenz-Ludlow and Walgamuth, 1998.
27. Falkner, Levi, and Carpenter, 1999.
28. Ball and Bass, 2000; Putnam and Borko, 2000.
29. Leinhardt and Smith, 1985; Schoenfeld, 1998.
30. Carpenter, 1988.
31. Clark and Peterson, 1986.
32. Schon, 1987.
33. Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989; Lewis and Ball, 2000; Schon, 1987.
34. Franke, Carpenter, Fennema, Ansell, and Behrent, 1998; Franke, Carpenter, Levi, and
Fennema, in press.
35. For an example of how such study might be conducted, see Ma, 1999.
36. National Research Council, 2000.
37. Franke, Carpenter, Fennema, Ansell, and Behrend, 1998; Franke, Carpenter, Levi, and
Fennema, in press; Little, 1993; Sarason, 1990, 1996.
38. Franke, Carpenter, Levi, and Fennema, in press.
39. These programs share the idea that professional development should be based upon the
 mathematical work of teaching. For more examples, see National Research Council,
2001. A comprehensive guide for designing professional development programs can
be found in Loucks-Horsley, Hewson, Love, Stiles, 1998.
40. Franke, Carpenter, Levi, and Fennema, in press.
41. Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) is a professional development program for
teachers that focuses on helping them construct explicit models of the development of
children’s mathematical thinking in well-defined content domains. No instructional
materials or specifications for practice are provided in CGI; teachers develop their own
instructional materials and practices from watching and listening to their students solve
problems. Although the program focuses on children’s mathematical thinking, teachers
acquire a knowledge of mathematics as they are learning about children’s thinking by
analyzing structural features of the problems children solve and the mathematical
principles underlying their solutions. A major thesis of CGI is that children bring to
school informal or intuitive knowledge of mathematics that can serve as the basis for
developing much of the formal mathematics of the primary school mathematics
curriculum. The development of children’s mathematical thinking is portrayed as the
progressive abstraction and formalization of children’s informal attempts to solve
problems by constructing models of problem situations.
42. Carpenter and Levi, 1999.
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43. Falkner, Levi, and Carpenter, 1999.

44. Campbell, 1996; Carpenter, Fennema, Peterson, Chiang, and Loef, 1989; Cobb, Wood,
Yackel, Nicholls, Wheatley, Tragatti, and Perlwitz, 1991; Fennema, Carpenter, Franke,
Levi, Jacobs, and Empson, 1996; Silver and Stein, 1996; Villasenor and Kepner, 1993.
45. Carpenter, Fennema, Peterson, Chiang, and Loef, 1989; Fennema, Carpenter, Franke,
Levi, Jacobs, and Empson, 1996.
46. Barnett, 1991, 1998; Davenport, in press; Gordon and Heller, 1995.
47. Lewis and Tsuchida, 1998; Shimahara, 1998; Stigler and Hiebert, 1999.
48. Hargreaves, 1994; Little, 1993; Tharp and Gallimore, 1988.
49. Learning First Alliance, 1998, p. 5.
50. Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 2000.

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