| Professional development activities are learning environments for teachers just as the classroom activities are a learning environment for students. Research on effective teaching is guided by the learning goals for students, and how these goals can best be achieved. It follows that research on effective professional development should be guided by the learning goals for teachers, and how these goals can best be achieved. This paper begins by arguing that systematic data documenting effective professional development mechanisms have not accumulated because what it means to become an effective teacher has not been made sufficiently clear. Obstacles that have discouraged the development of learning goals for teachers are discussed, coupled with the lessons learned from the CGI and SummerMath programs and the potential of setting goals. Once teachers' learning goals are made explicit, the mechanisms that encourage the achievement of those goals could be investigated systematically.; In particular, this study investigated teachers' report of the effectiveness of various professional development activities influencing their attention to students' thinking. The teachers' entry characteristics, nature of the activities themselves, and teachers' ratings of the activities were the focus of this study. Teachers were surveyed (N = 110) to rate each activities' effectiveness in prompting their attention to students' thinking. Teachers' years of experience, their views of learning, and their mathematics background were correlated with their ratings of various activities. Teachers (N = 13) were interviewed to extend the quantitative results and illuminate the reasons individual teachers rated particular activities as very effective to not effective at all. |
