Abstract
Change in mathematics teachers’ practice is often characterized as something that takes time and sustained intervention. In this article, I present the results of research that highlights a different kind of change—a profound change that takes place very quickly. Based on the analysis of 42 cases of such rapid and profound change, I also present a disaggregation of this phenomenon into five distinct mechanisms of change, each one rapid and profound. This disaggregation shows that not all changes, even when outwardly similar, are the same.
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Notes
Of course, what I notice is first and foremost predicated on what I find interesting. As a person who works in professional development settings I find all things associated with teacher change interesting.
In the settings in which I work my contact with teachers is discrete; constituted of a series of meetings at regular intervals. Teacher change in this setting is overwhelmingly observed to be incremental, gradual, and tentative, stretching out over several meetings and involving encouragement, planning, experimentation, and refinement. My use of the term rapid and profound is meant to describe changes that stand in stark contrast to this more usual form of change. So, for example, a teacher who is observed to change from no (or little) use of group work to ubiquitous use of group work wholly between two consecutive meetings without apparent trepidation is seen to have made a change that is rapid and profound.
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Liljedahl, P. Noticing rapid and profound mathematics teacher change. J Math Teacher Educ 13, 411–423 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-010-9151-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-010-9151-y