Leading team:
- Dr. Jason Cooper Project coordinator (2017-2020)
- Dr. Mirela Widder Project coordinator (2020-2021)
- Prof. Boris Koichu
Project team:
- Aliza Avrahamy Shavit
- Dr. Ronit Ben-Bassat Levy
- Kaltoum Khoury
- Dr. Ruth Reiz
- Dr. Ruti Segal
- Hayat Srour
- DafnaTal Kol
Secretariat and Administration:
Shani MotsaBrief
Municipal professional learning communities for the professional development of heads of mathematics departments in middle school operate and serve as a model for school mathematics-departments under the leadership of their heads of departments.
Heads of mathematics departments (HMDs) hold significant influence over the way that mathematics is taught and learned throughout the school; therefore, their professional development is of crucial importance. The teachers participating in this program – both practicing and potential HMDs – enrich their mathematical and pedagogical knowledge and develop leadership skills with the aim of generating lasting changes in the learning and teaching of mathematics in their schools. The project develops and supports municipal-level Professional Learning Communities led cooperatively by a researcher from the Weizmann Institute and a teacher from the local community, where HMDs explore and develop their practices. This provides a model for the way mathematics departments in schools can function as Professional Learning Communities led by their HMDs. The project’s degree of success is evident in the dissemination of innovative teaching practices in participating schools.
The project is funded by the Trump Family Foundation and by the Ministry of Education (2017-2021). To date, more than 120 HMDs and leading teachers from middle schools all over the country have participated in the program. A website (in Hebrew) provides sustainable support for HMDs – both graduates of the program and their future successors.
Further reading:
- Cooper, J., & Koichu, B. (2019). Reconciling tensions between lecturing and active learning in professional learning communities. In Graven, M., Venkat, H., Essien, A., & Vale, P. (Eds), Proceedings of the 43th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Vol. 2, pp. 169-178. Pretoria, South Arica: PME.
- Cooper, J., & Koichu, B. (in press). In the pursuit of impact: Design and practice of three innovative professional development programs for mathematics teachers. In A. Hofstein, A. Arcavi, & A. Yarden (Eds.), Fifty Years of Curriculum Development, Implementation and Research in the Department of Science Teaching, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Dordrecht, NL: Sense-Brill.