Re‐sourcing mathematics teaching through professional development

Abstract

In any education system, curriculum alone cannot fulfill reform demands imposed onto teachers to help learners make meaning of subject contents they learn. This paper revisits the notion of resources as explored in a mathematics teacher professional development project that focused on algebra learning. As a way to promote the use of manipulatives in teaching and learning algebra, the project introduced algebra tiles to participating teachers and investigated how the tiles facilitated the enaction of algebraic meanings. The participating teachers learned different ways of helping learners interpret and solve algebraic problems, with the use of algebraic tiles.