Grant Amount
NIS 1,500,000
School-Based Communities for Mathematics Teachers in 100 Middle Schools
Oranim College will lead a special program for middle school math coordinators who will be trained to lead school teacher communities
Oranim College will lead a special program for middle school math coordinators who will be trained to lead school teacher communities
Teaching applied mathematics which involves solving real life problems requires a shift in pedagogy. In other countries that have already made this transition, teachers moved from the traditional constructivist method, towards an approach that encourages self-regulated learning and peer discussions. In order to facilitate a similar transition in Israel, developers of applied mathematics tasks in universities offer designated professional development for teachers who want to use the new mathematics tasks in their classrooms. While this training is clearly necessary, it is not sufficient.
As they implement the new tasks, many teachers report that they need much more hands-on mentoring. We believe that a sustainable way to provide such mentoring would be by relying on each school’s local team of mathematics teachers. The school’s mathematics teachers regularly align their work with one another through routine meetings and ongoing communication. A department head, who is compensated for the additional work by the Ministry of Education, coordinates their joint work.
In order to engage the school-based mathematics teams in supporting teachers that apply the new tasks, we turned to Saleit Ron of the Oranim Academic College of Education. The college has experience in teacher training and professional development in schools, including creating learning communities. It previously partnered with the foundation in a teacher residency program for mathematics teachers. Ron is a longtime foundation partner, having directed the program to train mathematics and science teachers in the Teach First Israel program.
Oranim is proposing a special program to train middle school mathematics department heads to lead school-based communities for teachers that implement the new material. In these communities, the department heads will acquire an arsenal of best practices for teaching applied mathematics. Therefore, the first stage of the program will be to collect these practices from the various development programs and from the experience of teachers in high-performing education systems around the world. The product of this work will be a kit of ten best practices.
Following the first stage, 20 mathematics department heads will be trained and then create seven regional communities for an additional 100 department heads. Over the course of 60 hours, they will learn how to establish and operate their own communities in their schools. In collaboration with the Technion, the University of Haifa and the Weizmann Institute, the teachers will implement applied mathematics tasks in their classes by using the new pedagogical practices. Teachers will observe each other’s lessons and provide feedback, and analyze them in their school-based communities.
Throughout the program, instructional coaching to the mathematics department heads will be provided by the program team, which will also organize yearly workshops and seminars for the department heads.
The success of the program will be measured by diagnostic tests administered to the students of the participating teachers, aligned with the 5-6 proficiency levels of PISA in mathematics.
Many teachers report that they need much more hands-on mentoring to implement applied mathematics tasks
Oranim is proposing a special program to train middle school mathematics department heads to lead school-based communities for teachers that implement the new material