Mathematics Teachers' Change in the Context of Their Professional Communities

Mathematics teachers’ professional communities provide an important context in which to understand their practices, professional growth, and development. The general hypothesis that has guided the work of the school-level study of mathematics reform ¹ is that the focus, strength, and extent of professional community helps to support teachers’ practice; conversely, teaching practices help to create shared norms among teachers, which are characteristic of their professional communities. This chapter illustrates one direction of the complex interrelationship between professional community and teaching practice: Krome ² Elementary School’s teachers relied on their professional community to support their efforts to change and to enhance their school’s mathematics program.