Supporting Teachers to Foster Students’ Interest in Mathematics Through Flexibly Delivered Teacher Professional Learning
Keywords:
interest-promoting mathematics tasks, mathematics teaching, reflective professional learning, student engagement, student interest, teachers’ professional learningAbstract
This study reports on a 10-week professional learning course for teachers of mathematics in an Australian school, designed to address persistent student disengagement in mathematics. Prior research has identified task design and pedagogical strategies that can foster student interest. To support teachers’ adopting these strategies, an integrated and flexible hybrid course was piloted, which allowed teachers to choose both the depth of their engagement and the content they wished to emphasise, based on their individual professional learning needs. Data were collected from teachers’ interactions with the course and analysed using inductive thematic analysis to examine which course tools teachers found supported or hindered developing interest-promoting teaching practices. The analysis identified teachers’ preferences for different learning activities and the reasoning behind their choices. The findings highlight two activities as particularly supportive for teachers’ professional learning: reflection-on-the-spot and tasks that deliver. These findings contribute to the literature by specifying concrete features of professional learning that support teachers’ agentic knowledge building and meaningful changes in mathematics teaching practice.
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