Mathematics Teacher Development in South Africa Through Professional Learning Communities

As a form of mathematics teacher professional development, the Data-Informed Practice Improvement Project (DIPIP) set up and collaborated with school-based professional learning communities among high school mathematics teachers for five years. The professional learning communities aim to promote sustained teacher learning and inquiry, and teacher agency in their learning. The professional learning communities met regularly, supported by facilitators, to work on a set of developmental activities, in which teachers analysed learners’ errors in different teaching contexts. These activities developed the teachers’ knowledge of the reasoning behind learner errors and supported them to notice and take account of learner reasoning when they planned and taught mathematics lessons.  

Extensive research into the project forms the core of Mathematics Teacher Development in South Africa through Professional Learning Communities and shows how the professional learning communities were established and sustained, and how the team of project leaders worked together to develop ways to support the teachers. Contributors discuss the extent to which the participating teachers shifted their practices towards engaging with learner errors and learner thinking and developed their mathematics content and pedagogical content knowledge as they inquired into learners’ errors in their communities.