Mathematics

projects – together in small communities of practice, which communicate and
exchange between the face-to-face meetings via different modes.
Finally, the role of the learning communities is also essential in the phase of
writing the project report (cf. Figure 2). Each teacher has to document his or
her school project, evaluate it and at the same time reflect on his or her
teaching practice and its development during the teaching innovations and
interventions carried out. Members of the established learning communities
take the role of critical friends, promoting their colleague’s reflection process
and support them during the task of report writing.
4 The structure of interventions during a CMSE cycle
The following section focuses on some stages within the CMSE cycle.
4.1 The start-up workshop
After succeeding in the application phase, the CMSE participants meet for the
first time at the end of September at the start-up workshop (cf. Figure 2), which
lasts for two days. The aim of this start-up is to make participants familiar with
the IMST philosophy and to provide them with new impulses for their projects.
The start-up begins with a presentation of all five topical programmes of IMST
including the introduction of very successful projects of the last project year.
This phase of the start-up is to accustom the participants.
After this very general introduction and overview phase, each topical
programme group works together in their topical programmes for the rest of
the start-up. In the CMSE workshop we treat organisational issues concerning
project management, followed by input on subject specific competences,
competence models as well as aims and benefits linked to a competence
oriented instruction. After that CMSE team members work with the participants
on their individual project aims, fine tune them and deduce a first rough set of
evaluation strategies.
The second day of the start-up is dedicated to the formation of focus groups.
The focus groups are proposed by the CMSE team. Each focus group consists
of four to seven participants and is coached by two coaches. In the focus
group each participant presents his current working version of the project,
focusing on project aims, corresponding instructional measures and first ideas
about evaluation. Within this session the participants get feedback and hints of
the focus group coaches and of the other participants.
4.2 Collaboration in Focus Groups
After the start-up the teachers are supported by their focus groups in the
implementation of their project. The focus group functions as "critical friend",
supporting each other in the project implementation and with reflection work.
The focus group operates in different modes. There are interim face-to-face
meetings of some or all group members with the focus group coaches,
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