“Collectively We’re Stronger Than We Are as Individuals”: Understanding the Development of Inquiry-Oriented Communities of Mathematics Teachers

Abstract

Students’ engagement in meaningful, rigorous mathematical work and seeing themselves as mathematics learners with power and agency requires that teachers have the support of colleagues in a robust, generative community. While we have examples of such communities, we know little about how they form and the role of professional learning facilitators and school administrators in fostering and sustaining them. As a principal contribution of this dissertation, I build on a rich body of work related to teacher community and teacher learning to put forth a framework for subject-specific groups of educators in schools, what I call inquiry-oriented professional community. An inquiry-oriented professional community of mathematics educators engages in ongoing exploration together in relation to, for example, community members’ instructional practice, students’ mathematical thinking, and underlying discourses about who is capable of engaging in rigorous mathematical activity. Community members open up authentic problems of practice for the group to wrestle with, making often personal ideas and concepts public so they are open for clarification, disagreement, refinement, and, perhaps eventually, some consensus. At the heart of inquiry-oriented professional community is the aim of shifting and shaping accepted ways of teaching. I make use of this framework in three analyses, which together contribute to the field’s understanding of how these communities form and their leadership and facilitation. In Chapter 2, I examined 42 studies of eight inquiry-oriented professional communities of mathematics educators to understand the features and role of leaders supporting the development of such communities. The findings from this review highlight the foci of inquiry, aspects of vision, routine structures, normative practices, and leadership tasks that might contribute to the development and sustainment of robust, generative communities. I also illuminate a number of gaps in the literature, including an explicit focus on the role of school leaders and the experiences of teachers in such communities. In Chapter 3, I report on a qualitative case study of the practice of the principal and two instructional coaches at Forest Middle School as they worked to develop inquiry-oriented professional community among the mathematics department. The findings implicate a set of considerations for the practice of other leaders supporting inquiry-oriented professional communities and illuminate the critical role of the school administrator. In Chapter 4, I report on a qualitative case study of the Forest Middle School mathematics department's work in relation to tensions that emerged as two novice teachers in the department worked to enact their commitments in practice. Specifically, I identified routine structures and discourse practices that appeared to support the two teachers to both surface and navigate tensions. The findings of this study shed light on facilitation and leadership in support of a community’s generative learning.