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Promotion and offering in professional development programmes for mathematics teachers: What happens when there’s a mismatch?

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Abstract

The EU-funded project Supporting Mathematics and Science Teachers in Addressing Diversity and Promoting Fundamental Values (MaSDiV) (2017–2020) promoted inquiry-based learning as a pedagogy that supports diverse and multicultural classrooms. This project included the design of a professional development (PD) programme for teachers. This paper explores the mismatches between acts of promotion and offering in this PD programme when it was implemented in Malta with mathematics teachers. Findings suggest that a promotion-offering mismatch, especially when a PD programme forms part of an international project, is: (1) inevitable in view of the personal interpretations that participants construe from the texts that promote the programme; and (2) costly for everyone involved and for the quality of the PD experience itself. These results position mismatches as unwelcome occurrences. While it appears impossible to eliminate mismatches completely, the argument is made that the costs of mismatches could be mitigated by developing PD content and adopting a PD model that would increase the possibilities that the implementation of a PD programme maintains fidelity to the programme’s principles. This calls for an approach to PD programme development and implementation that recognizes mismatches as a reality to be factored in from the design stage onwards.

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Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Michael A. Buhagiar & James Calleja

  2. Ministry for Education, Floriana, Malta

    Mariella Galea

Authors
  1. Michael A. Buhagiar
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  2. James Calleja
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  3. Mariella Galea
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Correspondence to Michael A. Buhagiar.

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Ethics approval

Ethical approval (i.e., consent to participate and consent for publication) was obtained from the University of Malta Research Ethics Committee in two stages: for first data set (surveys and teacher portfolios) prior to the implementation of the MaSDiV project in Malta; for second data set (i.e., focus groups and researchers’ meetings) through an application by the three authors.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Task 1: Can the earth feed us?

figure a

Appendix 2: Task 2: Mosaics

figure b

Appendix 3: An example of task adjustment

figure c

The task Can the earth feed us? (i.e., Task 1 in Appendix 1) targets all the five core principles of the MaSDiV project (see Table 1). The above adjusted version of Task 1 retains, in comparison with the original task, the links to food (but the context is no longer real-life) and an element, in part (ii), of investigative work when doing mathematics (in line with efforts in Malta to encourage the use of active learning approaches, such as IBL). Thus, the adjusted task keeps reference to only one of the five core principles of the project, namely, achievement. Overall, the adjusted task, apart from having an element of IBL, is similar to the examination-like questions that students normally face in class. As such, it does not engage students in work that would support, as intended by the project, the creation of diverse and multicultural classrooms.

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Buhagiar, M.A., Calleja, J. & Galea, M. Promotion and offering in professional development programmes for mathematics teachers: What happens when there’s a mismatch?. J Math Teacher Educ 26, 635–666 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-023-09589-0

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