PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS

EXPERIENCING GOOD TEACHING

The effective professional development of teachers requires learning content through viewpoints and methods consistent with the Pacific Standards for Excellence in Mathematics and in Science. Mathematics and science learning experiences for teachers should provide opportunities for them to examine, reflect on, and revise their beliefs about the nature of mathematics and science.

Teachers are greatly influenced by the teaching they see and experience. Their learning experiences have a powerful impact on the education they provide their students. Prospective and practicing teachers spend many hours in courses, workshops, seminars, and other structured learning environments. As a result of these experiences, they form ideas and beliefs, and develop techniques that contribute to their evolving vision of what mathematics and science are, how they are learned, and how they should be taught.

Instructors in preservice and inservice programs, both in the disciplines and in education, model good mathematics and science teaching by:

• emphasizing and valuing important mathematics and science concepts and posing worthwhile activities that build on the teachers' current knowledge, skills, and attitudes,
• engaging teachers in mathematical and scientific discourse and use of a variety of tools, including laboratory equipment, calculators, computers, physical and pictorial models,
• creating learning environments that support and encourage mathematical and scientific reasoning and inquiry; and dispositions and abilities to do mathematics and science,
• encouraging reflection on the process and outcomes of understanding mathematics and science through inquiry and discourse,
• expecting and encouraging teachers to take intellectual risks in doing mathematics and science and to work both independently and collaboratively,
• demonstrating mathematics and science as ongoing human ventures,
• affirming and supporting full participation in and continued study of mathematics and science by all.

Content and education courses for both preservice and inservice teachers are effective when they address the major components of teaching-inquiry, reasoning, problem solving, communicating, learning environment, and analysis of teaching. This shifts the focus from content presented through lecture and demonstration to active participation and involvement. Mathematics and science teachers do not "teach" content; instead they help learners construct their own understanding of mathematics and science.

The shifts in mathematics and science education and the changing expectations placed on teachers call for substantial changes in the philosophy and strategies used in mathematics, science, and education programs. A wider range of tasks, tools, and modes of classroom interaction enables such a change. Collegial groups to share and model new instructional strategies assist in the change process. This type of instruction can help all learners experience mathematics and science as dynamic means to solve problems. Instruction organized around experiences that address issues, events, problems, or topics that contain important mathematics and science and are of interest to participants provides preservice and inservice teachers with a model to use in their own classrooms. Such instruction engages participants in searching for solutions to problems and provides continuing opportunities to talk about both mathematics and science.

Effective inservice programs at the district and school level also reflect these characteristics.