| The combination of the recent push for reform-based teaching and federal legislation has placed a renewed emphasis on professional development across all content areas. The development of content standards and the No Child Left Behind Act have created new expectations for students to achieve, as well as for teachers to utilize better teaching techniques. Research shows the goals of professional development must include developing teachers with the necessary skills to continually access new knowledge about student learning and innovative teaching strategies. This professional development should be ongoing and include best practices, which have shown to increase student achievement. It will help to improve teacher instructional capacity, which will assure high quality teaching. The purpose of this research was to study teachers' perceptions of relevant practices in mathematics needed in professional development as an avenue to enhance overall teacher quality in math. These perceptions were acquired through a survey and a focus group, and were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively in order to find major themes in the responses. |
