Professional
development of mathematics and science teachers enables them to develop
a broad repertoire of instructional strategies so that they can integrate
their knowledge of content and learning with their experience to design
instruction that meets the needs of students.
Effective mathematics and science teaching is more than knowing content and understanding students. Skilled teachers are able to integrate the two to create learning situations that match the needs of those in the classroom with the science and mathematics to be learned. Effective professional development provides teachers with this capacity.
Effective preservice and continuing education programs help mathematics and science teachers develop a knowledge of and the ability to use and evaluate:
Pedagogy in mathematics and science focuses on the ways in which teachers help their students come to understand and be able to do and use mathematics and science. Learning is a developmental process that takes time and is often hard work.
Effective teachers use a variety of forms of instruction that permit students to build their own mathematical and scientific knowledge and their abilities for posing, constructing, exploring, solving, and justifying problems and concepts. Promising models for such instruction are all highly interactive. In such models, teachers both demonstrate and elicit communication and thinking, facilitating learning rather than presenting faultless products and correct answers.
Effective professional development programs enable teachers to use strategies that will actively engage students in mathematics and science. By working in groups, students have an opportunity to verbalize their own understandings and to hear those of others and to reflect upon differences, challenging themselves by asking for reasons and accounting for their own thinking and reasoning. This process promotes deeper understanding and conceptual development. Another practice that supports students' participation involves shifting responsibility for control of learning from teacher to student by expecting students to make commitments to their work and answers.
Assessment has a central role in the effective teaching of both mathematics and science. Effective professional development programs prepare teachers to integrate the understanding and use of a variety of methods of assessment as an ongoing part of their educational life. The assessment standards presented earlier in this document describe assessment which will lead toward achieving the vision for Pacific children.
A deep understanding of the art of teaching is fundamental to the effective teaching of mathematics and science. Decisions about instructional materials are intimately associated with decisions about ways to represent mathematics and science concepts and ways of knowing. Choices for instructional strategies and classroom organizational models both evolve from and influence such decisions. Teachers' knowledge and their ability to use and evaluate these components in their own teaching develop over time. Growing professionally engages teachers in reflecting on and assessing their own efforts to promote inquiry, reasoning, problem solving, and communication in the classroom. This will enable them to know what works or does not work so that they can improve, enrich, and extend their instruction.