Professional Development for Heads of Mathematics Departments (PD-HMD)
Leading team
- Dr. Jason Cooper Project coordinator (2017-2020)
- Dr. Mirela Widder Project coordinator (2020-2021)
- Prof. Boris Koichu
Project members
- Aliza Avrahamy Shavit
- Dr. Ronit Ben-Bassat Levy
- Kaltoum Khoury
- Dr. Ruth Reiz
- Dr. Ruti Segal
- Hayat Srour
- DafnaTal Kol
Summary
Heads of mathematics departments (HMDs) can influence the way that mathematics is taught and learned throughout the school, hence the professional development of HMDs is of crucial importance. The participating teachers – both practicing and potential HMDs – enrich their mathematical and pedagogical knowledge and develop leadership skills, with the goal of bringing about lasting changes in the learning and teaching of mathematics in their respective schools. The project develops and supports municipal-level Professional Learning Communities led by a WIS researcher and a teacher from the local community, where HMDs investigate and develop their practices. This provides a model for how school mathematics departments can function as professional learning communities led by their HMDs. Evidence of dissemination of innovative teaching practices in participating schools serves as the main success criterion in the project.
The project is funded by the TRUMP Foundation and by the Ministry of Education (2017-2021). More than 120 heads of mathematics departments and leading teachers from middle schools all over the country have participated in the program. A website (in Hebrew) provides sustainable support for HMDs – both graduates of the program and their future successors.
Administration
Links for further reading
- Project website
- Cooper, J., & Koichu, B. (2019). Reconciling tensions between lecturing and active learning in professional learning communities. In Graven, M., Venkat, H., Essien, A., & Vale, P. (Eds), Proceedings of the 43th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Vol. 2, pp. 169-178. Pretoria, South Arica: PME.
- Cooper, J., & Koichu, B. (submitted for publication). In the pursuit of impact: Design and practice of three innovative professional development programs for mathematics teachers. In A. Hofstein, A. Arcavi, & A. Yarden (Eds.), Fifty Years of Curriculum Development, Implementation and Research in the Department of Science Teaching, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Dordrecht, NL: Sense-Brill.