Collaborative research in in-service teacher professional development

Abstract

Teachers in Iceland are faced with challenges to differentiate teaching as the implement a policy of inclusive education. This collaborative inquiry into teaching of mathematics aims at learning to understand how teachers develop their mathematics teaching through participanting in a developmental research. Seven primary teachers worked at improving their mathematics teaching and researched their practice together with a teacher educator for three years. Narrative inquiry was used as an analytical tool to study the teachers' learning. In this paper the focus is on one of the teachers and her learning from participating in the project. The results indicate that the gained confidence in teaching mathematics in diverse classrooms while participating in workshops and that collaborative research can support teachers in developing their practice when meeting new challenges in their work.