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.