Hilda Borko

Our project, “Preparing Facilitators to Lead Teacher Professional Development: An Initial Conceptual Framework and Exploratory Investigation” addresses a critical issue for the field of education: the continued professional development of the teaching force. We focus on mathematics teaching and on the central role of professional development facilitators. Research has identified the knowledge and skills that facilitators of mathematics professional development need to conduct productive professional development activities. However, we know little about the characteristics of effective facilitator preparation programs.

The seed grant will enable scholars from three countries who have conducted extensive research on mathematics teacher professional development and initial investigations of facilitator preparation to work collaboratively to develop a conceptual framework and design principles for facilitator preparation. We will conduct the following activities together with early-and mid-career faculty: 1) develop an initial conceptual framework; 2) collectively analyze existing data from two programs – one in the US and one in Israel; 3) revise the framework based on that analysis; and 4) use the initial analysis and revised framework to design an international research program on facilitator preparation. We will also explore potential sources of funding for the next phase of this research program. These activities will be bookended by two team meetings. The seed grant will fund the two international project meetings; the collaborators will use our own funding to conduct the collective data analysis and the initial explorations of the research methodology for the multi-site international study.