Examining novice teacher leaders’ facilitation of mathematics professional development

• We examine teacher leaders’ facilitation of a mathematics PD model.
• Teacher leaders’ workshops closely matched the intentions of the PD model.
• Workshops were successful with respect to culture and selecting video clips.
• Workshops were less successful in fostering aspects of teacher’ knowledge.
• We propose the construct “mathematical knowledge for professional development”.

This paper reports on novice teacher leaders’ efforts to enact mathematics PD through an analysis of their facilitation in workshops conducted at their schools. We consider the extent to which teacher leaders facilitated the Problem-Solving Cycle model of PD with integrity to its key characteristics. We examine the characteristics they enacted particularly well and those that were the most problematic to enact. Facilitators were generally successful with respect to workshop culture and selecting video clips for use in the PD workshops. They had more difficulty supporting discussions to foster aspects of mathematics teachers’ specialized content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. We suggest a number of activities that may help to better prepare novice PD leaders to hold effective workshops. Furthermore, we conjecture that leaders of mathematics PD draw from a construct we have labeled Mathematical Knowledge for Professional Development (MKPD), and we posit some domains that may comprise this construct.