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Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education

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Using the Unfamiliar to Problematize the Familiar: The Case of Mathematics Teacher In-Service Education

Abraham Arcavia; Alan H. Schoenfeldb a The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel b University of California, Berkeley, California

To cite this Article Arcavi, Abraham and Schoenfeld, Alan H.(2008) 'Using the Unfamiliar to Problematize the Familiar:

The Case of Mathematics Teacher In-Service Education', Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 8: 3, 280 295 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14926150802315122 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14926150802315122

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION, 8(3), 280295, 2008 Copyright C OISE ISSN: 1492-6156 print / 1942-4051 online DOI: 10.1080/14926150802315122

Using the Unfamiliar to Problematize the Familiar: The Case of Mathematics Teacher In-Service Education1
Abraham Arcavi
The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Alan H. Schoenfeld
University of California, Berkeley, California
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Abstract: Schoenfelds theory of teaching (Schoenfeld, 1998, 1999) describes, explains, and predicts teacher practice and, more specically, teachers decision-making processes, in terms of their knowledge, beliefs, and goals. On the basis of this theoretical model of the teaching process, we designed a workshop with the purpose of providing mathematics teachers with analytical tools with which to reect upon their own practice. Two rounds of this workshop were implemented with teacher leaders and mathematics educators. Participants collectively watched videotapes of teaching practices that included examples of a range of teacher decisions and actions. The tapes served as stimuli for both spontaneous and guided conversations about teacher knowledge, goals, and beliefs. Initially, two main kinds of comments predominated: evaluative and research oriented. As the workshops progressed, a third and potentially more productive mode of analysis of teacher practices evolved. We briey describe the design of the workshops, their implementation, and the main watching modes and comments. It appears that teachers and researchers can be induced to think about why other teachers (and perhaps themselves) make particular instructional moves, and that they can engage substantially with the roles of knowledge, goals and beliefs in shaping instructional choices. R sum : La th orie de lenseignement de Schoenfeld (Schoenfeld, 1998; 1999) d crit, explique et e e e e pr dit les pratiques denseignement, et plus pr cis ment les processus d cisionnels des enseignants, e e e e en termes de leurs connaissances, de leurs convictions et de leurs objectifs. Sur la base de ce mod` le th orique des processus denseignement, nous avons mis sur pied un atelier ayant pour but e e doffrir aux enseignants de math matiques des outils analytiques leur permettant de r chir de e e e e e e facon critique sur leur enseignement. Deux volets de cet atelier ont et r alis s, avec la collaboration de formateurs et denseignants des math matiques. Les participants visionnaient en groupe des e enregistrements vid o illustrant diff rentes pratiques denseignement, y compris des exemples vari s e e e de d cisions et dactions p dagogiques. Les enregistrements servaient de stimuli aussi bien pour e e des conversations spontan es que pour des discussions dirig es portant sur les connaissances, les e e objectifs et les convictions des enseignants. Au d but, deux types de commentaires pr dominaient: e e ` les commentaires valuatifs et les commentaires orient s sur la recherche. Au fur et a mesure e e que progressaient les ateliers, un troisi` me mode danalyse potentiellement plus productif a emerg . e e Nous d crivons bri` vement la conception et la mise sur pied de ces ateliers, ainsi que les diff rents e e e
Address correspondence to Abraham Arcavi, Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel. Email: abraham.arcavi@weizmann.ac.il

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modes dobservation et commentaires qui les ont caract ris s. Il apparat donc quon peut induire e e ` les enseignants et les chercheurs a se pencher sur les raisons qui poussent dautres enseignants (et, ` eventuellement, les poussent eux-m mes) a prendre certaines d cisions p dagogiques en particulier, e e e et quils sont en mesure de r chir activement sur leurs connaissances, leurs objectifs et leurs e e convictions.

TEACHERS AND TEACHINGA PARTIAL HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The democratizing of education in the Western World (or in at least parts of it) began sometime during the 19th century. Previously, mathematics education was primarily devoted to the training of the very few: future mathematicians, scientists, or engineers. The task was in the hands of masters who were the researchers themselves with the main goal of preparing new generations of masters and researchers. Thus, mathematics itself was the main (and possibly only) concern. This did not preclude the fact that some masters (e.g., Wallis, Euler, Saunderson) implicitly used pedagogical approaches to organize their exposition. During the second half of the 19th century, some aspects of mathematics (which focused largely on arithmetic) and other subjects began to be taught to a wider population, at which point mathematics teaching started to become an occupation of its own, separated from the profession of a mathematician. Becoming a teacher began to require a distinct education, rst in organized preservice studies and then incorporating in-service components. In-service teacher education, recognized as important quite early, has undergone drastic changes since its inception. During the nal decades of the 19th century and the rst decades of the 20th century, supervision was a major force of great inuence in the continuing education of teachers. . . . The function of supervisors was . . . to enforce conformity of rules and to transmit their superior knowledge to teachers (Gibb, Karnes, & Wren, 1970, p. 314). It was in the second half of the 20th century that an unprecedented series of forces started to direct the attention of educators to the need for improving the background and effectiveness of in-service teachers (Gibb et al., 1970, p. 339). One of the major needs was to update teachers knowledge of the mathematics needed in order to teach new curricula:
Given the present state of curriculum changewhich may well slow down, but is unlikely to stopone important criterion that teacher training should satisfy is that the teacher should be able to teach a programme that differs vastly from that which he learnt in schooland that during his teaching career he should be able to adapt to the continuing process of change. (Bruckheimer & Hershkowitz, 1983, p. 127)

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Alongside the attention to content, teaching capabilities started to capture attention as a topic of study and thus many in-service activities were devoted to polishing teaching skills and implementing desirable behaviors (e.g., microteaching).2 The assumption was that certain behaviors and techniques are worthy of replication and that such replication would promote the improvement of teaching (Sparks & Loucks-Horsley, 1990). Over the past two decades, three major developments have deeply inuenced in-service teacher education: research ndings that have advanced the elds understanding of student cognition and classroom functioning, standards-oriented educational reforms, and theoretical advances in teacher knowledge and decision-making (e.g., Shulman, 1986). The very name in-service (let alone training) gave way to the more general characterization teacher professional development,

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sometimes preceded by the adjective continuous or ongoing. Ball and Cohen (1999) summarize the profound changes such professional development should imply as follows:
A great deal of learning would be required for most teachers to be able to do the kind of teaching and produce the kind of student learning that reformers envision, for none of it is simple. This kind of teaching and learning would require that teachers become serious learners in and around their practice, rather than amassing strategies and activities (p. 4)

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In consequence, the focus of professional development nowadays aspires to be much wider than at any time before: both the content and the pedagogy of teacher professional education go beyond the knowledge of mathematics, the exercising of certain teaching techniques, the knowledge of curriculum, and the knowledge of student difculties. Professional development certainly includes all the above but also much more. It aims at professionalism that encompasses all the internal workings of a profession and the concern of a professions members to do the best possible job for their clients (Noddings, 2001, p. 102). It also implies the nding of ways to use practice as a site for inquiry, in order to center professional learning in practice (Ball & Cohen, 1999, p. 19). As such, it certainly includes the development of professional tools such as reection, analysis, and informed decision-making.

TEACHERS AND TEACHINGA PARTIAL THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Consider what is taking place at any point in a lesson, from the teachers perspective. Note that the teacher has carried into the classroom a substantial body of knowledge. This includes knowledge of the content, of the school environment, and of the students and his or her history with them. At a more ne-grained level, it also includes various routines, scripts, and schemata for dealing with classroom content and process. Similarly, the teacher has entered the classroom with a complex set of beliefs about the school, the students, and the content. The teacher has general goals and plans for the instruction and the students, and specic goals and plans for this lesson and its component parts. Moreover, many of these goals are linked to action plans, mechanisms by which the teacher expects to achieve those goals. But now we are in the classroom, with the lesson in play. Something happens. It could be that a segment of the class has been concluded as planned. It could be that a student is in the midst of working a problem (either correctly or incorrectly) at the board. It could be that an unexpected issue has just arisen. The question, given our understanding of the teacher, the context, and the current constraints, is: Something has happened. What will the teacher do next, and (more importantly) why? (Schoenfeld, 1998, p. 2)

The above quote illustrates both the scope and the main components of Schoenfelds theoretical model. The core idea of the model is that it is possible to describe, explain, and predict teachers decision-making and actions during teaching on the basis of their knowledge, beliefs, and goals. Over the past 20 years, the literature on teachers and teaching has identied and extensively described teacher knowledge, beliefs, and goals. Schoenfeld proposes to go some steps further, describing the ways in which these elements interact and result in teachers in-the-moment decision-making. The core aspects of Schoenfelds theory of teaching in context are as follows. The theory presumes, rst, that teaching is goal-oriented; that is, that when they are teaching at any particular

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moment, teachers are trying to achieve one or more goals. Those goals may be to present certain material; have students discuss a topic or idea; establish or maintain a particular kind of classroom community; or, when things are going badly, simply to survive the lesson. Second, teachers also have a body of knowledge they can call upon, for both expected situations (often in a lesson plan) or for unexpected situations. For example, most algebra teachers have seen the common student mistake (a + b)2 = a2 + b2 , and they have a range of techniques for dealing with that mistake. Third, teachers, like everybody, have a series of beliefs about mathematics, students, and teaching that shape their choice of actions. Thus, for example, when confronted with an unexpected comment from a student that could lead to a 10-minute discussion, a teacher who believes strongly in the value of rewarding students intellectual initiative might opt to pursue the discussion, at the cost of being diverted temporarily from his lesson plan; another teacher might feel that the class schedule is too important to deviate from and proceed with the lesson as planned. Schoenfeld proposes that goals, knowledge, and beliefs interact as follows. The teacher begins the lesson with a tacit or explicit lesson plan, starting some regular activities: review, collecting homework, breaking the class into groups, whatever is intended. If a particular activity goes according to plan, the goals relating to that activity are satised, and the goals for the next activity become highest priority; the lesson continues as planned. If something unusual happens (for example, the mistake mentioned in the previous paragraph), then the teacher has to deal with the new situation. Depending on what s/he believes, the teacher will establish prioritiesshould the new situation be dealt with or not? If it should, the teacher has access to various types of knowledge, resulting in various classroom options. For example, the teacher might deal with the mistake by asking the students what they think of the formula (a + b)2 = a2 + b2 and engaging them in discussiona move that might take 5 minutesor the teacher might simply say that the formula is wrong, give an example, [(3 + 4)2 = 32 + 42 ], and write the correct formula. Which option the teacher decides to pursue will depend on the teachers beliefs and high-priority goals at the moment. Once the option is chosen, the teacher is again engaged in goal-oriented behavior. When the path set in motion has been completed, the teacher can then decide (on the basis of goals and beliefs) whether to return to the next part of the lesson plan or do something else. This broad framework has been used to model, on a line-by-line basis, the teaching decisions of a student teacher teaching a traditional high school mathematics lesson, an experienced high school teacher teaching a nontraditional (but teacher-directed) lesson, and a third-grade teacher teaching a nontraditional lesson in which the lesson agenda was coconstructed by the teacher and students (see Schoenfeld, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2008). Our purpose is to indicate how knowledge, beliefs, and goals, the main constructs of Schoenfelds theory, inspired and guided the design and implementation of what Ball and Cohen (1999) call a curriculum for professional learning (p. 20) and a pedagogy for professional development (p. 25), both grounded in and around the study of practice. The general idea is the following. Under the assumption that knowledge, beliefs, and goals interact to shape how teachers teach (and therefore shape much of what students learn), it follows that programs for teacher development should meaningfully involve explicit awareness, reection, and discussions of knowledge, goals, and beliefs in and around practice. If professional development is about growth and change, it would seem essential to bring to the fore that which (consciously or unconsciously) underlies the conceptualization of practice and its implementation.

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Some readers may dispute our identication of change as a main goal for teacher development programs. We would argue that education, and certainly professional education, is precisely about interventions intended to support and guide growth, learning, and development. One aspect of learning and development is certainly changechange in its broadest terms, and not necessarily the narrow connotation that refers to the mastery of new knowledge or techniques. Change could include, for example, the adoption of new tools to examine (or reexamine) ones own practices. The use of new tools for reection may result in becoming aware of and explicit about the underlying determinants of what one thinks, plans, and does. This may lead either to shifting practices or to a conscious and grounded adherence to extant practices. We propose that in both cases this would qualify as change and not only when there is an obvious and observable shift of practices. We believe that a productive form of professional development, which is respectful of teachers as professionals, is to help teachers become increasingly aware and sound decision-makers about their practices and to become empowered to do so in a much more informed way. How can one support this kind of learning? How may teachers become familiar with new analytical tools and comfortable and procient in their use? As in any educational enterprise, this requires the creation of well-designed interventions. Such interventions can gain much from intuitions, collective wisdom, and self-perceived needs but also from theory and empirical research. The purpose of this article is to present and describe the rst steps of such an innovative intervention for teacher development programs. The design of the intervention was based on the theoretical framework described above. Its goal is to offer teachers potentially powerful analytical tools for professional development and growth. The reective use of these tools would empower teachers to rethink, re-view, and support their practices. We begin by describing briey the process and the rationale of the design of a teacher course on the basis of the theory; then we describe the course itself. We proceed to describe parts of two implementation experiences, presenting data that suggest in which ways the workshop functioned and the insights we gained from the experience.

FROM THEORY TO DESIGN There are several ways in which a theory can inuence educational practice in general and the design of educational interventions for teacher professional development in particular. In our case, we looked for an answer to the following: if teachers decision-making and actions are determined to a large extent by their knowledge, beliefs, and goals (and the interactions thereof), how can reection on these become the central part of a meaningful professional development activity? One possible rst reply is that teachers learn about knowledge, beliefs, and goals and about the ways these shape their practice. However, this general answer does not bring us very far, as it only devolves into other questions, such as: what would it mean to learn this? To become acquainted with theoretical constructs? And how should teachers learn about it? It was clear to the authors of this article from the very beginning that an academic course (similar to those aimed at graduate students) would not constitute the most appropriate answer to the questions above, either for preservice teachers or for practicing and experienced teachers.

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Regardless of the pedagogical approach of such a course, the aim was neither acquaintance with the theoretical aspects and nuances of the ideas nor their applicability to research. The denition of constructs, the intricacies of theory, and the way it works in explaining data would leave teachers cold at best. The challenge was to design a workshop in which the constructs knowledge, goals, and beliefs become operational tools for analysis and reection upon observable recorded practice, both regarding content-related issues and regarding the nature of learning. Thus, this became our decision regarding the design of a workshop, even when at that stage we did not have in mind any specic audience of teachers, except that they would be practicing and experienced professionals. We thought that the questions to be discussed regarding content-related issues should include the following. What is important about the mathematics, and why? What do the teachers in the videotaped lessons focus on mathematically? (What content, what processes? Is their approach conceptually oriented, procedural, etc.? What [perhaps implicit] messages does the teaching send about what it means to learn and do mathematics?) Are there possibilities other than the ones that were chosen, and what does the fact that those possibilities were not chosen reveal about the videotaped teachers views/knowledge of mathematics? What might the underlying reasons be that a particular pathway was chosen and not others? Regarding learning, we believed the questions should revolve around teachers views of who their students are and what they can do, and on the classroom climates teachers promote. What views of learning are reected by the actions teachers take? Are there other possible views, and how would those be reected in teaching? What do teachers classroom practices reveal about what they think their students are capable of learning (or should learn)? What does it say about their goals for students? What lessons (either intended or unintended) might students be learning from those classroom experiences? How are content and process goals seen, through the eyes of the students? It was clear to us that these kinds of questions should be grounded in very specic teaching episodes, recorded on video. Videotape allows looking at the same episodes several times, so that previously unnoticed details and different foci may become apparent. It is possible to study the same video through multiple lenses as well as to compare multiple and varied videos through the same lens (Seago, 2000). Talking openly about the profession of teaching with peer teachers and especially with academics (for whom teaching is an object of study) is always a sensitive matter for teachers all over the world. For such conversations to be productive, it is necessary to create an atmosphere of trust and condence. For this purpose, one possible starting point can be videos of other teachers classrooms, with sufciently remote and unfamiliar experiences such that distance enables enough detachment to allow for free speaking and commenting. In the long run, if and when trust is built, it may then be possible to engage in discussions about the participants own practices as related to their knowledge, goals, and beliefs. (Our pilot workshops did not reach that stage.) For the design of the workshops, we selected seven publicly available videotapes of mathematics classrooms. The tapes include two geometry lessons from Japan and the United States (taken from the TIMSS3 tapes), two algebra lessons from Japan and the United States (also from TIMSS), and tapes from Wilcox and Lanier (2000). The design of the questions for discussion included an extended process in which we watched the tapes many times, considered issues for discussion (and simulated possible teacher discussions), shared our ideas with colleagues, pilot-tested the sessions with one volunteer

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teacher, and redesigned the questions and the sequences accordingly. Wary still that this kind of discussion-based workshop was a totally new experience, and aware that the way this experience is managed can be crucial to its success, we decided to run the rst trials very carefully.

IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS The Audience The pilot workshops, parts of which are reported below, took place in Israel, where the U.S. classrooms seen in the tapes, although not completely unfamiliar, are quite distant (and the Japanese classrooms are completely unknown to most). Although the design of the workshops was aimed for in-service mathematics teachers from different places and contexts, we decided to carry out the rst trials with a selected audience of about 20 mathematics educators, curriculum developers, expert teachers (who had undergone many hours of professional development and who run workshops themselves), and graduate students. All of them had ample teaching expertise, volunteered to participate, and were seasoned enough to withstand the experience. The workshops were introduced as a pilot experience aimed at developing new tools for reecting about the teaching of mathematics, the assumption being that teachers make decisions on the basis of their knowledge, goals, and beliefs, even if they are not aware of them. After the participants were briey exposed to Schoenfelds theory, it was stated that the work would consist in trying to understand together how these underlie and determine the important teacher actions in class, as reected in the videotapes. This declaration had to be repeated periodically throughout the workshop as the discussion took various directionsnot necessarily those intended by us and agreed with the participants at the outset. We proceeded with the workshop, which centered on multiple viewings and discussions of the tape. The Materials In this article, we focus on three (of the seven) videotapes discussed in the workshops: the Japanese geometry lesson, the Japanese algebra lesson, and the U.S. algebra lesson.

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The Japanese geometry lesson

The Japanese videotaped lesson shows a class working on two related problems. Solving them calls for a nontrivial extension of a property studied in a previous lesson: that all the triangles with the same base, and whose third vertex lies on a line parallel to that base, have the same area (the constant area property). The teacher starts by reminding the class of this property using a visually dynamic demonstration (without resorting to formulae) and then poses the rst problem: replace the nonstraight boundary dividing two pieces of land (as in Figure 1) by a straight boundary line while preserving the areas of the original pieces. That is, what is required by the problem is to replace the bent line by a single straight line so that land is neither gained nor lost by either side. The teacher initiates the discussion by illustrating what the solution may look like. He places a straight stick on top of the bent boundary, as an

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FIGURE 1

Two Pieces of LandThe Problem in the Japanese Geometry Lesson.

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approximate solution and then slides it and asks students to suggest where the solution may be. Then the teacher invites students to work individually on the problem, while he circulates around the classroom making comments to individual students about their work. After that, although not explicitly shown in the video, students work in groups. Only then is there a classroom discussion in which students present their solutions. The second part of the lesson is about solving another problem (which also calls for a solution on the basis of the constant area property): to transform a given quadrilateral into a triangle that has the same area.

The Japanese algebra lesson

Most of this video is devoted to one single problem written on the board by the teacher (see Figure 2). The teacher calls on students to present different approaches to solve the problem. The rst approach presented by a student is numerical trial and error. The second approach, which some of our participants called logical, is presented by the teacher. The third approach, the symbolic, is presented by another student. The teacher devotes much attention to the evaluation of the different solution methods in terms of efciency and generality. He also tries to foster an appreciation for the power of symbolic procedures.

The U.S. algebra lesson

This lesson has two parts: one in which some problems are reviewed and a second in which students work individually. In the two sections the math topics are different. We describe here only the rst part, focusing on the warm-up problems given by the teacher (see Figure 3).

FIGURE 2

The Problem in the Japanese Algebra Lesson.

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FIGURE 3

Warm-up Problems in the U.S. Algebra Lesson.

Some Results The rst run of the workshop was intensive12 hours over 3 consecutive days during the summer. The second run was 89 hours over a period of 3 months. The workshops were not videotaped, but one observer took notes and the conductor of the workshop wrote notes immediately after each session. Most of the workshop participants appeared engaged at all times, and the discussions were lively. Throughout the workshops, it became clearer what kinds of discussion can be productive and why and what it takes to support those discussions. At the beginning of both runs, two main points of view could be identied in the comments made by participants: the Researchers Point of View and the Evaluative Discourse. Only later did a third perspective slowly emerge.

The researchers point of view

One can claim that there are many research traditions and thus many ways to analyze data and to produce research results. It is not our intention here to study these differences but rather to establish some common characteristics of a researchers point of view when watching videos and, more specically, when watching the tapes described above. As mentioned, some participants in the workshop were researchers. Their watching of the tapes shared a common point of view: the videotapes were considered as data, which are subject to interpretation, which in turn can produce ndings (either of constructs or of phenomena of certain generality). The comments of people who held this point of view were of the following type (the comments are paraphrased for the purpose of translation into English).

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Complaints about the data: The TIMSS tapes are edited. They present parts of the lesson and omit many others, not to speak about the fact that there is no clear sense of the sequence of lectures that preceded the lesson taped. For example, in the Japanese geometry class it is hard to know whether the property of the triangles was already applied to other, simpler problems. In the Japanese algebra class, there is no sense of where the whole class stands regarding algebra, since students present solutions of quite different levels of sophistication (a trial and error solution versus a full symbolic development). In the U.S. class, there is no sense of why the seemingly diverse problems were grouped together. Clearly the focus of the tapes is on some teacher actions. However, there is not much in the tapes about student actions; thus, all that can be said about teachers is speculative at best. There is no possibility of triangulation, no possibility of seeing students and teachers in interviews about the lesson. Complaints about workshop direction: What kinds of questions (research questions, that is) can these tapes raise that could possibly be useful to explore? In other words, what can one learn from this tapes in terms of teaching and learning that has not been reported in research already? Use of constructs for analysis: How can knowledge, beliefs, and goals be helpful constructs to analyze these tapes? In sum, people holding a research perspective were looking at these tapes for substance from which to build new knowledge in mathematics education that can be reported, discussed, and defended in a research forum with fellow researchers. The main difculty here was that the data were found mostly inappropriate for this kind of analysis, even before a theoretical frame could be chosen or developed.

The evaluative discourse

We borrowed this term (from Seago, 2000; see also Nemirovsky, DiMattia, Ribeiro, & Lara-Meloy, 2005) in order to describe a second point of view through which many participants watched the tapes. This point of view includes the issues of values, judgments and commitments (Seago, 2000, p. 32), or in other words: what is desirable, what can be improved, what is bad pedagogy, what would I have done differently and why? One of the main questions that we proposed as a tool for watching the tapes was consider alternative ways. This question was designed to simulate discussions but turned out to support the evaluative discourse. For example: Participants experienced with technological tools to design instruction in geometry deplored the fact that the Japanese teacher did not make a more intensive use of technology, which he had available. They started to draft a proposal about how the technological tool could have been used more effectively or more intensively. Placing the stick to illustrate the solution in the geometry lesson may have misled the students and may have focused their attention to attempt an empirical solution. The comments of the Japanese geometry teacher to individual students are essentially directions for work, hints intended to move them forward along the solutions expected, rather than questions of the sort how did you get there? and where is your work heading?

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Participants who were used to discussing the importance of multiple representations in their algebra classes were very critical of the fact that the Japanese algebra teacher did not invite or present a (Cartesian) graphical approach to solve the problem. This fault was seen as serious, especially if (given the importance of Cartesian graphs) the main point of the lesson was to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to solve the problem. The teacher in the Japanese algebra class talks too much. The algebra class seems to be staged. The teacher gets the answers he needs for his agenda, in the order he wants. They unfold as part of a hierarchy of solutions, from the more elementary to the more general, so that he can easily build the moral sought. Most classes would not work like this. The U.S. lesson, especially its rst part, was seen as a disconnected sequence of disparate exercises in which, although some of the questions were considered good, there was no clear message or topical coherence. The above examples illustrate two quite different modes of watching the videos with very different agendas. One way of characterizing these modes would be to consider the products sought by participants. The researcher might, in general, seek to uncover and explain a new phenomenon, proposing a theoretical construct to either enhance an existing theory or to attempt to build a new one; or the researcher might propose a new and productive methodology. Teachers, teacher educators, or curriculum designers holding the evaluative point of view, would be after a good lesson (what one considers good depends, of course, on ones pedagogical values) and they would tend to contrast alternatives in order to search for the better one. This mode is not always critical. At times it can show sensitivity toward the teacher (Considering the situation and the constraints, which we dont understand very well, the teacher probably did the best he could), but even so, the comment is judgmental.

Reective-analytical discussions
From the perspective of the conductor of these workshops, the purpose was neither adopting/developing/understanding one of these two points of view nor bridging between them. It was clear that such discussions would have taken this workshop far from its original intended goal, which was to propose and to experience the use of (theoretical) constructs as analytical tools to promote reection. For that purpose a new and signicantly different perspective would need to be nurtured, experienced as productive, and exercised.

Example 1: The Japanese geometry lesson. When the teacher in the Japanese class used the stick to illustrate possible positions of the replacement fence, some workshop members objected that this action could have misled students toward proceeding with an empirical solution. The conductor of the workshop posed the question: What might have the teachers intention been, provided we grant him that he works in the best interest of his students? Such a question does not dismiss outright the potential disadvantages of the action taken by the teacher, but it redirects the discussion to what may have been the teachers underlying goal or belief. Responses to this question may be judged plausible or implausible, depending on the consistency of the attributed goals and beliefs with the teachers actions. Such an analysis of the teachers actions

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does not focus on its productiveness and cannot be supported by any extra data (because such data are unavailable). Thus, it takes the question away from both points of view described above to a new terrain. This presentation was helpful in the emergence of a new mode of discussion as evidenced by comments like the following:
The teacher may want to make sure that students have a visual sense of compensation of areas and thus an appreciation of what a sensible solution may look like. What may seem visually plausible to the students could be important to this teacher because it may imply that he values sense-making and also he believes it is important to provide an anchor against which to judge whether the solution (when obtained) is in the right ballpark.

Thus, teacher actions may imply specic beliefs and goals, a point worth discussing. If we were to adopt a research mode, this possible interpretation of what underlies the teacher action would need to be substantiated by data, in such a way that alternative interpretations could be dismissed with a high level of certainty. If we were to adopt the evaluative stance, we would applaud or dismiss this action. However, a comment proposing a plausible speculation about an underlying belief or goal can be seen in another light altogether: it can be useful as a preliminary exploration of the possible space of underlying reasons teachers may have for certain actions. The intellectual exercise of proposing that an action may be consistent with certain goals or beliefs and making those explicit (even if they cannot be proven right) was the kind of exercise we wanted to support, because it enhances reection and analysis. In addition, comments like this can enrich the discussion even further, as happened in the workshops. A judgmental reply was counter-offered: Yet, assuming this was the intention of the Japanese teacher, he is still disregarding that students may follow his stick illustration as a false lead and proceed to an empirical solution (using visual trail and error). At this point, the conductor of the workshop decided to take an action that Seago (2000, p. 73) would describe as seizing judgmental comments and going underneath them. He proposed the following question: Assume that the teacher has considered the risk of misleading the students and decided to take the chance anywaywhy would he decide so? A participant suggested that maybe the teacher can be credited with believing that the students may still make the connection between the property they were reminded of at the beginning of the class, even when (a) its application in this case is not straightforward and (b) there is an intervening discussion about an issue which has the potential to distract students attention from the connection. The workshop conversation then turned to the distance between a property learned and its use when applied to problem-solving and how different curricula and teachers may treat the issue. That is, the attribution of a certain belief to the teacher caused the conversation to shift to the following: How straightforward and transparent do we think the application of a mathematical property should be when one asks to students to solve problems that use it? And what would be the implication of this permissible distance regarding what and how you believe your students are capable of learning (or what they should learn)? What does it say about perhaps tacit or unacknowledged constraints that one imposes on lesson design? In this way, the focus of the conversation shifted, somewhat naturally, to the impact of beliefs upon pedagogical practices. The tape had served as a catalyst for a productive discussion. On the one hand, the speculative nature of this kind of discussion frees it from the need to establish certainty about plausible interpretations. On the other hand, it removes the evaluation

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focus. It moves the discussion toward the analysis of what may underlie a certain action or decision on the part of the teacher. Moreover, as was the case above, it can evolve further toward the explicit discussion of issues, opening spaces for investigation and reection. In managing this type of analysis, we expect an increase in the level of participants awareness of possible reasons underlying certain actions. This, one hopes, may lead to self-inspection of the following type: Why am I doing this? What intended or unintended message may I be sending to students? What might be the conscious or unconscious goal of such a decision? And what if . . .; that is, what might have been the goals of alternative actions and decisions? The question What are alternative ways? evolved in the workshops. At the beginning, alternative decisions or actions were presented in order to make explicit contrasts with better or worse pedagogical options. Slowly, participants started to use this question as a tool for analysis, to see that specifying alternative decisions/actions provides a window into a large space of possible underlying goals or beliefs. Exploring such a space also has the potential to unveil complexities and conicts that are less likely to appear in the two other modes of discussion.

Example 2: The U.S. algebra lesson. Similar patterns were observed in the discussion that followed the rst part of the U.S. algebra lesson. Those who adopted the research point of view saw the sequence of exercises as another instance of the skill and drill mode of teaching, commenting on how widespread this type of approach is. On the evaluative side of the discussion, teachers were critical of the differential ways in which some exercises were treated, how opportunities for presenting heuristics were missed by the teacher, and even how one solution (a = 99, b = 1 for problem 3) was missed altogether. The comments were well taken, but we still wanted to keep developing our new mode of discussion, and for that purpose we posed questions like: Assume a teacher who is acting in the best interest of her students, who made the conscious decision to choose these warm-up problemswhat could have been her goals? Her beliefs? What would have she wanted her students to walk away from such a class with? A participant suggested that, with respect to the rst three questions in Figure 2, the teacher may have believed that there is always value in problems that can be approached without too much previous knowledge, and it is important to convey this sense of condence by allowing students to solve problems whose solutions can be guessed rather quickly, or approached numerically. Suddenly, the problems can be seen in another lightthey had a clear purpose, and they take into account what the teacher thinks some of the students want or need in a mathematics classroom. Another participant took the issue further by claiming that sometimes problems of this nature can (if the teacher so wants) spark a discussion that raises above the mere supercial. For example, one can verify numerically when 2n is larger than n! but then discuss arguments to establish the certainty that from a certain value of n onwards this is no longer the case. Here, a teachers rationale for using such a problem could be that simple numerical problems can give birth to more sophisticated questions with which one can engage. One participant commented that these warm-up exercises are glued together without any coherence, a common characteristic of drill-and-skill textbooks. Such a comment was a trigger for the workshop leader to propose the following question. Can we assume for certain a lack of coherence in this set of problems? Lets think hard, maybe someone had a certain unifying goal in mind which we dont seem to appreciate? The hypothetical question was intended again to depart from the more evaluative toward the more analytical and to stretch our imagination beyond what appears to be clear stereotypes of problems or lessons.

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When we posed the question, it was not clear that it had a plausible answer, nor was it clear whether such a goal would be mathematical, cognitive, or affective. However, intuitively, it was clear that such a question has potential value in advancing the emergent mode of discussion. A very nice and surprising response emerged: All these warm-up problems share, in a very non-transparent way, different contexts of appearance of one important and ubiquitous mathematical topic in algebra: decomposition into factors (factorization). Whether or not this was the intention of the author of this set of problems (which cannot be established), this comment was sensed as very insightful by most participants, who found themselves in agreement with it. Thus, this set of problems can be used in a much more sophisticated way than seemed at rst glance (for example, to discuss the many forms and functions of factorization in algebra). Moreover, the insight about internal coherence was convincing and useful because it brought to the fore issues at the core of mathematics education. Issues that emerged in the ensuing discussion included the following. How much can one/should one read into a textbook? How much do we need or want this type of coherence? Moreover, what kind of learning do we envision when we assume and value such coherence? Is it always true/desirable that an organizing idea behind a set of seemingly disconnected problems will facilitate learning, especially when each of these problems can serve a very local and specic goal? Note that the question triggering such a discussion was posed as speculative. Questions of this nature are a way of guring out how to use evaluative statements as entries into analysis (Seago, 2000, p. 73). We value this kind of discussion because it enables its participants to unpack beliefs about mathematics and goals for teaching and learning; it provides a mechanism for discussing them openly, neither with a research perspective nor in an evaluative way. Comments From a Participant At the time of the workshop, TA was an advanced graduate student working on how teachers make sense of students answers. TA decided to participate in the rst workshop, since the topic was close to her research interests. As a result of what she experienced, she decided to participate in the second workshop as well. We talked to TA about her experience in the workshop. She was enthusiastic about the idea (and its implementation) that theoretical constructs can become practical tools to focus on questions that moved participants away from their initial views toward the discussion we had. She claimed that she was aware of the theory concerning the role of knowledge, beliefs, and goals and that she was (and still is) doubtful that only these three constructs can describe and explain teachers decision-making. However, beyond theory and possible agreements or disagreements with it, what she claimed was that the crux of the experience was the possibility of experiencing the constructs as tools to analyze teaching and as potential diffusers of the evaluative discourse so common with teachers. TA commented that, in teacher courses (or in their work) teachers usually imagine or design practice as it is construed from given goals. In this workshop the direction was reversed. Participants viewed a teachers actions and decisions and had to infer the teachers goals and beliefs. Teachers are not accustomed to this way of thinking, in which they are led to speculate on what may underlie examples of practice. According to TA, this approach offers an opportunity to break away from the evaluative point of view by encouraging participants to infer a wide range of

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goals and beliefs, some of which are not necessarily consonant with their own. For that purpose, TA added, it is very crucial to have a clear sense of how to manage the questions and where to guide the discussions.

FINAL THOUGHTS In our quest to fashion innovative professional development activities that support growth and learning, we attempted to be in line with recommendations regarding helping teachers become serious learners in and around their practice, rather than amassing strategies and activities (Ball & Cohen, 1999, p. 4). For that purpose, we chose to make use of theoretical constructs as operational tools for analyzing teacher decisions and actions. In the workshops, knowledge, beliefs, and goals became a resource for addressing issues of practice. The answers proposed to questions posed in the workshops unfolded a richer space of possible reasons for teacher actions than initially assumed by participants. This rich space of possibilities provided participants with issues and complexities for reection and discussion. The ultimate goal of this type of professional development activity is for participants to internalize the kinds of questions posed and for them to pursue (perhaps with colleagues) discussions that such questions stimulate. The hope is for practice to become more thoughtful, based on an awareness of and reection on a wide spectrum of reasons for decisions and actions. Our pilot experience suggests that this kind of workshop can be productive and that it has the potential to provide participants with the tools to develop points of view different from those that they were initially so wedded to. This is the kind of growth and change that we discussed in our introductory comments. We are aware that these two workshop trials represent pilot attempts to see if and how such workshops can function. We conclude, on the basis of what we have discussed, that it would be worthwhile for the experience to be repeated, rened, and carefully studied. Next steps are that the workshop should be conducted with different population of teachers. The experience should be more systematically monitored and the burden and doubts of the conductor of such a workshop should be studied in more depth.

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NOTES 1. An earlier and shorter version of this article has been published in Portuguese as a chapter in the book Tendencias Internacionais em Formacao de Professores de Matem tica a [International Perspectives in Mathematics Teacher Education] (pp. 87111), edited by Marcelo Borba, 2006. We are grateful to the editor for granting permission to write this extended English version. 2. Microteaching is a teacher-training technique widely used in the 1960s and 1970s for the purpose of breaking down the global teaching act into more precisely dened, observable, and trainable general skills, such as chunking the content into understandable units, pacing the lesson, making frequent summaries, using the blackboard and other classroom resources in an organized way, exercising patience toward longer response time, uses of nonverbal feedback, etc. Microteaching was usually practiced as a teaching situation

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scaled down in terms of time (10- to 15-minute episodes), number of skills practiced, and number of students. Sometimes colleagues acted as students, who, after the lesson, engaged in an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, and possible improvements to the lesson. Microteaching was one of the earliest arenas to use videotapes in teacher education. 3. The acronym TIMSS stands for Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and it is the general name of a series of studies conducted by the International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). These studies are conducted on a 4-year cycle since 1995, with the purpose of assessing mathematics and science achievements of fourth and eighth graders from many countries all over the world (for more details see http://timss.bc.edu/). The videotapes used in the design of the workshop of this study are publicly available (for details, consult http://www.llri.org/html/pubvs99.asp).
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