Scaling up professional development in mathematics curriculum reform: Influences for the multipliers work

Abstract

A Portuguese national long-term professional development programme for support mathematics teachers in curriculum change took place from 2006 to 2012. More than 1000 schools and 12500 mathematics teachers were involved. The results reveal that the multipliers are directly affected by many interrelated factors from different contexts (Krainer, 2015): the support given by the scientific commission and their pears are fostering factors; the educational policy (different curriculum in schools and decreasing work conditions provided) and the curriculum school’s culture are hindering factors. This suggests that the effectiveness of multipliers’ work is nor top down, nor bottom up defined — instead, it results of all the contexts in multiple ways. The perceived changes affecting the cascade functioning along the six years, suggest that cascades that develop in a long time period need to acknowledge its dynamic nature.