Mathematical education and primary school teacher's professional development

Abstract

The article summarizes a doctoral research that investigated how five teachers from 4th and 5th grades of primary school can construct their professional development in an in-service education on Mathematics Education. The in-service education was developed by collaborative and cooperative processes. The qualitative approach attended investigation-action and investigation-formation methodologies, in which were used as instruments video recordings, class diaries, interviews and semi structured questionnaires. The analyses were articulated to the interconnected model of professional development, idealized by Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002), in the following domains: personal, practice, external and of consequences. The results indicated that any transformation that occur to teacher professional development is a medium and long-term process. We identified favourable conditions for professional development and protagonism, to besides to dominate the specific knowledge of mathematics, transform it into knowledge to be taught at school. The moments of dialogues and experiences between teachers brought benefits to the formation process, mainly to improve teachers’ professional performance. Teacher professional development varied in pace and intensity according to the involvement and the professional needs of the teachers in formative process. Among the professional needs, we recorded the re-signification of content related to solving mathematical problems, using different solution strategies, as well as the theoretical and practical solving problems, in the additive and multiplicative fields.