Findings from an extensive four-year program with a single cohort of elementary and early middle school mathematics instructors highlight several important themes that can inform other efforts in developing teacher leaders. The authors describe the Arizona Master Teachers of Mathematics (AZ-MTM) program as an example that supports the development…

This is a story about teachers engaging in mathematics teacher leadership. The focus is on the teachers' learning, and the purpose is to illuminate the process. The setting is a semester-long graduate class called Teacher Leadership in Mathematics Education, and the characters are elementary and middle school teachers. Those in this group…

As partners in a professional development project, the authors jumped at the opportunity to use a real-life problem to engage elementary and middle school teachers in a one-day exploration of the concept of area. "Length times width"--a common response to the question, "What is area?"--is a rote formulaic expression that applies only to certain…

Asked to complete a decimal-ordering task, several preservice teachers were unable to arrange the values from smallest to largest. Even more surprising to the authors were the number who could solve this task correctly but could not justify their solution by representing each decimal in an area model using a decimal grid. Their preservice teachers…

In the move from elementary to middle school mathematics, students encounter major changes in instructional materials and approaches, work expectations, school structure, and general level of difficulty in material. Research shows that, in general, students suffer significant declines in academic achievement in the transition from elementary…

Online conversations help teachers engage in constructive criticism and attend more carefully to aligning lesson plans with problem solving. This article describes a strategy for using an online discussion board to help teachers evaluate one another's lesson plans. The online peer-review activity suggests that fostering critical pedagogical…