ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, there has been a major (re) focusing of attention in the mathematics education literature, both in policy and research, on the role of the teacher in understanding and implementing educational change. In the area of policy, many new curriculum reforms around the world acknowledge the need for professional development (PD) of teachers as an integral part of school change process. For example, in the United States, the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published a set of standards for teacher education programs (NCTM, 1989b) and for the PD of teachers (NCTM, 1990) to parallel its earlier standards for curriculum and evaluation (NCTM, 1989a). Although concerns have been raised about the view that these documents “provide the direction, but not the mechanism, for reform in school mathematics” (Brown & Borko, 1992, p. 235), they have been used as the basis for several PD innovations (Aichele & Coxford, 1994). In Australia, the federal government has undertaken a discipline review of teacher education in mathematics and science (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1986), raising several issues related to initial and continuing education of teachers. In Mexico, the Development of Education Program (Poder Ejectivo Federal, 1996) clearly identifies the concern of the government to strengthen basic, or compulsory, education by focusing attention on schools as places for developing effective teaching and as special places for the PD of teachers. The Program asserts that educational change is only effective if it starts from the agents of education—that is, the teachers—themselves. According to the document, teachers are seen as “essential agents in the dynamics of quality, for whom special attention should be given to their social, cultural and material conditions” (p. 13). Hence, the Program establishes teacher training and development as areas of priority and calls for a re-assessment of the social role of the teacher in the whole educational system.
