2013 Conference Proceedings - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

summer professional development activities. We believe this to be a direct result of our effortsat introducing problems that could be solved using both conventional and non-conventionaltechniques and having to argue to justify whether something worked always, sometimes, ornever.In the analysis of the observation notes and videos of the teachers doing rich problems it wasnoted that in the early stages of the grant most of the teachers worked the problems alone at first.They only shared out when the faculty asked them to do so. This sharing initially consisted ofthem showing each other how they did the problems. The more confident the teacher the morethey wanted to share. As the grant progressed and teachers had multiple opportunities to solveproblems and experience non-conventional approaches, all teachers were more likely to sharetheir methods of solving the problem. We also observed that the teachers began to engage inboth presenting their reasoning and listening to and critiquing the reasoning of others. So bothour notes and analysis of videos (of teachers engaged in doing rich tasks in the PD) supportedthat teachers did learn mathematics that would help to support their teaching of high schoolmathematics.Table 1 below contains the results of a survey of the teacher’s view of the nature ofmathematics. They completed this survey after two years of professional development had beencompleted.Table 1MT = Mathematics teacher. Int. Sp. = Intervention SpecialistSubgroupPart I(Absolutist-Fallibilist)Part II(Authoritarian-Social Constructivist)AC – Int. Sp. 3 3.4JE –MT 3.88 4.4AB – MT 3.11 3.8DM – MT 3.66 3KT - MT 3.33 4.8MN - MT 3 3.2TB - MT 3.44 3.4TR - MT 3.22 4CW – Int. Sp. 3.22 3.8SS – Int. Sp. 3.33 4.2JF - MT 3.33 3Proceedings of the 40 th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning 2013 121