Partnership work as a tool for professional development of mathematics teachers

Abstract

The present text is part of a doctoral investigation in the narrative research modality, and it aims to identify and discuss collaborative work as an instrument of professional development through a partnership among teachers who teach mathematics. This investigation was carried out in a third-grade classroom of a public school in the state of São Paulo, where the researcher, who is a mathematics teacher, established a partnership with the pedagogue teacher in charge of the class. Data production occurred from March to July 2017, when the researcher and the partner teacher, under a collaborative perspective, planned, developed, recorded, evaluated, redesigned, and reflected on tasks focusing on spatial notions. The classes were videotaped, the task planning and analysis moments were audiorecorded and later transcribed and transformed into interactive episodes. Taking references from the historical- cultural perspective, Bakhtinian ideas, and narrative research, professional development is assumed to result from learning that is constructed in an alteritarian way, in the different interactions that the teacher establishes in the exercise of his/her profession. The text, based on episodes that comprise moments of interaction between the partner teacher and the researcher or between them and the children, provides evidence of how the intersocial and reflective processes of the partner teachers promoted learning and possible professional development.