Exploring the Emergence of Community Support for School and Encouragement of Innovation for Improving Rural School Performance: Lessons Learned at Kitamburo in Tanzania

This article describes a qualitative exploration of a primary school in a remote rural community of Tanzania, whose students showed promising performance in mathematics, as measured by the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE). Case study methods were used to conduct research about the school and community in order to understand the dynamics that shape the school and village as community and communities. Interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted. The paper identifies the role of village leadership in generating a learning community (Warren, 2005), that initiated community support of the school, which in turn prompted teachers’ innovations for developing in their work as professionals, that improved teaching and learning practices in mathematics and contributed to the noted promising performance on the PSLE. The article concludes that although school principals and teachers are regarded as keys in generating professional learning communities (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008; Fullan, Hill &Crévola, 2006 ), under good community leadership communities may be essential catalysts in establishing and sustaining professional learning communities and contribute to school improvement

Researching Mathematics Pedagogy

Author's accepted manuscript.acceptedVersio

Layering methodological tools to represent classroom collectivity

Our research is guided by the question: “How might we observe, document, display, and analyze data from a collective systems perspective?” In this research forum, we share new research tools for studying mathematics classrooms, highlight opportunities for observation and analysis by layering these tools, and then illustrate how the layering of tools allows for visual distinctions across lessons and classrooms.Research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Exploring the Emergence of Community Support for School and Encouragement of Innovation for Improving Rural School Performance: Lessons Learned at Kitamburo in Tanzania

This article describes a qualitative exploration of a primary school in a remote rural community of Tanzania, whose students showed promising performance in mathematics, as measured by the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE). Case study methods were used to conduct research about the school and the community and included interviews, focus groups, and observations. This paper describes the role of community leadership in generating a learning community (Warren, 2005), that initiated community support of the school, which in turn prompted teachers’ innovations in professional development, that improved teaching and learning in mathematics and contributed to the observed promising performance on the PSLE. The article concludes that although school principals and teachers are regarded as keys in generating professional learning communities (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008), under good community leadership communities may be essential catalysts in establishing and sustaining professional learning communities which may contribute to school improvement

Invited Lectures from the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education

The book presents the Invited Lectures given at 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13). ICME-13 took place from 24th- 31st July 2016 at the University of Hamburg in Hamburg (Germany). The congress was hosted by the Society of Didactics of Mathematics (Gesellschaft für Didaktik der Mathematik - GDM) and took place under the auspices of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI). ICME-13 – the biggest ICME so far - brought together about 3500 mathematics educators from 105 countries, additionally 250 teachers from German speaking countries met for specific activities. The scholars came together to share their work on the improvement of mathematics education at all educational levels.. The papers present the work of prominent mathematics educators from all over the globe and give insight into the current discussion in mathematics education. The Invited Lectures cover a wide spectrum of topics, themes and issues and aim to give direction to future research towards educational improvement in the teaching and learning of mathematics education. This book is of particular interest to researchers, teachers and curriculum developers in mathematics education