Supporting and Sustaining the Learning of Professional Teaching Communities in the Institutional Setting of the School and School District

这是一项为期五年的纵向研究，通过在过去两年中与两组在不同城市地区工作的中学数学教师建立的合作，来支持和维持专业教学社区的学习过程。在一个地区，管理人员通过试图监控和规范教师的教学实践来应对高风险的问责制测试，而在另一个地区，管理人员通过向教师提供新工具和新形式的知识来应对问责制压力。该项目的第一个目标是开发一个分析框架，旨在将数学教师的教学实践置于学校、学区和更广泛的政策环境的制度环境中。这一框架的一个主要目的将是在体制范围内协助扩大创新。第二个目标是，该框架将通过与两个地区的教师和管理人员的持续合作进行试点测试和完善，并使用它来指导制定具体策略，以支持两个截然不同的地区数学教学的实质性变化。在这样做的过程中，战略和猜想将不断得到检验和修订，从而在其拟用于的范围内修订框架。该项目的第三个目标将是通过测试、修改和修改专业教学社区发展的推测轨迹来调查创新之旅，在将两个专业教学社区的实际学习轨迹与两个地点的不同组织环境联系起来的过程中。第四个目标是，当研究人员在拟议项目的最后一年撤回直接支持时，通过记录两个专业教学社区的发展，调查可持续发展所需的组织条件。分析这些数据的目的是对专业教学社区的最初出现和随后的发展进行纵向描述，为期五年。这样，两个社区将位于各自地区的机构环境中，从而在专业教学社区的社会背景和地区的组织环境中定位合作教师不断发展的教学实践。学生结果数据将允许研究者记录教师教学实践对学生数学学习的影响。

This is a five-year longitudinal study of the process of supporting and sustaining the learning of professional teaching communities by building on a collaboration that has been established over the past two years with two groups of middle-school mathematics teachers who work in contrasting urban districts. In one district, administrators have responded to high stakes accountability testing by attempting to monitor and regulate teachers' instructional practices whereas in the second district administrators have responded to accountability pressures by providing teachers with access to new tools and new forms of knowledge. The first goal of the proposed project is to develop an analytic framework designed tosituate mathematics teachers' instructional practices in the institutional setting of theschool, the school district, and the broader policy environment. A major purpose of this framework will be to assist, within the institutional setting, in scaling up innovations. As second goal, the framework will be pilot tested and refined through ongoing collaboration with the teachers and administrators in the two districts by using it to guide the formulation of specific strategies for supporting substantial change in mathematics teaching in the two contrasting districts. In doing so, strategies and conjectures will be tested and revised on an ongoing basis, thereby revising the framework in the context in which it is designed to be used. The third goal of the project will be to investigate the travel of an innovation by testing, modifying, and revising a conjectured trajectory for the development of professional teaching communities, in the process relating the actual learning trajectories of two professional teaching communities to the contrasting organizational contexts at the two sites. The fourth goal will be to investigate the organizational conditions necessary for sustainability by documenting the development of the two professional teaching communities when the researchers' direct support is withdrawn in the final year of the proposed project.The goal in analyzing these data will be to develop longitudinal accounts of the initialemergence and subsequent development of the professional teaching communities over afive-year period. In doing so, the two communities will be situated within the institutionalsettings of respective districts, thereby locating the collaborating teachers' evolvinginstructional practices in both the social contexts of the professional teachingcommunities and the organizational settings of the districts. The student outcome datawill allow the researchers to document the consequences of changes in the teachers' instructional practices for the students' mathematical learning.