2013 Conference Proceedings - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

isolated and often occur in tandem with one another because they are interrelated behaviors(CCSSO, 2010). For example, making sense of problems and looking for mathematical structureare likely to occur during a problem-solving session. In order for students to elicit behaviorsindicative of the SFMP, teachers must design and enact instruction that allow students to wrestlewith mathematics content and its applications in an environment that supports and sustainsmeaningful engagement with mathematics.There is no prescribed set curriculum or pathway for teachers to encourage these behaviors intheir students; however, worthwhile tasks and mathematical discourse provide a vehicle forsupporting students’ mathematical thinking (NCTM, 2007). Video analyses of USA teachers’instruction indicates that generally speaking, teachers are not promoting the process standards ormathematical proficiency (Hiebert et al., 2005), much less the SFMP. Hence, mathematicsteacher educators should provide professional development that assists K-12 mathematicsteachers’ understandings of the student behaviors found in the SFMP and how those behaviorscan be promoted through their instruction. The purpose of this paper is to discuss K-10mathematics teachers’ perceptions about the SFMP.Professional DevelopmentTeachers need professional development during the transition to the CCSSM. This PD “willrequire practical, intensive, and ongoing professional learning - no one-off ‘spray and pray’training” (Hirsh, 2012). An underlying goal of most professional development is to enhanceteachers’ understanding of content, pedagogy, or content-focused pedagogy. Results from anational sample of more than 1,000 mathematics and science teachers indicated that three factorsare most likely to influence teachers’ practices: (1) connection to teachers’ prior experiences, (2)alignment with standards, and (3) opportunities to share ideas with other teachers (Garet, Porter,Desimoney, Birman, & Yoon, 2001). Engaging teachers with mathematics content in a way thatfosters hands-on learning and finding ways to integrate PD activities into a teachers’ daily lifeled to longer lasting positive instructional outcomes (Garet et al., 2001). Thus, mathematicsteacher educators ought to focus on these factors to promote coherent PD.A metaanalyis of PD suggests that there are some key features to designing effectiveinservice teacher education (Guskey & Yoon, 2009). First, workshops and summer institutesthat focus on implementing research-based instructional practices, active learning, andopportunities to adapt these practices in the classroom were highly correlated with positiveProceedings of the 40 th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning 2013 86