Key Ideas in Mentoring Mathematics Teachers

A research-informed online professional development course placing teaching and learning maths at the heart of mentor-mentee conversations.

Mentors are experienced mathematics teachers who draw on their wealth of knowledge about what works and is effective in teaching and learning of mathematics. They reflect upon this knowledge to consider how to best mentor less experienced mathematics teachers and colleagues. While their wisdom of practice is a rich source for supporting their mentees, a research-aware and research-informed mentor is empowered to share not just from their own experiences, but also beyond what worked or not in those particulars contexts they experienced.

As such, mentors in schools play an important role in helping teachers see the relevance of research to classroom practice and supporting them develop of a deeper understanding of the role of research in mathematics education.

Challenge

A review of the support for mentors nationally and internationally clearly indicated that such support is sparse and rather generic, and when available, factors such as time constraints, workload issues, caring responsibilities, and costs of professional development courses often prevent teachers from accessing professional development support. Moreover, when such courses are run at specific times in a year and physical attendance is required, teachers may be unable to access such support.

The aim was thus to design a course that would support participants to familiarise themselves with topic-specific maths education research, and to draw on such knowledge that places the teaching and learning of mathematics at the heart of mentor-mentee conversations.

Solution

The Key Ideas in Mentoring Mathematics Teachers (KIMMT) is offered as an online asynchronous professional development course. The asynchronous delivery mode facilitates self-paced studying that accommodates, more flexibly, the various needs of the participants on this course, most of whom are practicing mathematics teachers. Two optional one-hour live sessions provide opportunities for participants and the course designers to come together and reflect on how the design of the course with its interwoven strands: ‘The Pedagogical’, ‘The Research’, and ‘The Online Community of Mathematics Mentors’ strands supported their learning.

The motivation for KIMMT came from consistent recommendations of the body of research which suggests that there is a need to support mentors through professional development opportunities that offer subject specific support, which encourages a focus on the subject matter, its teaching and its relation to students. 

KIMMT covers four carefully chosen, powerful pedagogical and inter-connected themes of the school mathematics curriculum titled as “Fostering Algebraic/Geometric/Numerical/Functional Reasoning”, where each weekly theme requires on average about four hours study time per week at participants’ own pace. 

Impact

Since its launch in January 2020, over its first four presentations, the course has been attended by over 120 participants from seven different countries. Analysis of the data collected from participants’ online contributions and the optional live online sessions added to the evidence which accounts for how the design approaches to the KIMMT course supported the participants to be introspective of their ability to provide explanations of and solutions to classroom-inspired scenarios, that are informed not only by teachers’ own wisdom of practice, but also by the mathematics education research base of the course.

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Photo by Phil Meech

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