Professional Development Program for High School Mathematics Teachers

IMPA, Rio de Janeiro, January to June 2002

  1. Preliminary

    This project aims to provide training for high school mathematics teachers throughout the state of Rio de Janeiro. Held since 1990, it continues the successful program undertaken by the same group, training teachers in topics relevant to all three years of high school.

    This resulted in a series of books specifically aimed at high school teachers, published in the SBM's Mathematics Teacher Collection . It is safe to say that this collection represents the best resource available in Brazil for training high school mathematics teachers.

    Most of the first books in the collection resulted from another project undertaken by the same group, sponsored by VITAE, which trained around 800 teachers from all over Brazil. Each of the books from this project is dedicated to a high school curriculum topic. The following titles are available:

    In a later phase, with the support of the CAPES-FAPERJ program, the books entitled *The Mathematics of High School – Volume 1* , * Volume 2* , and *Volume 3* were produced. As the name indicates, they are organized to cover, each one, the material of one of the high school grades. In addition to the care taken with the concept and critical perspective of each topic, present in all the books in the Collection, the books in this new series are more relevant to the classroom, discussing the teacher's role in teaching each subject and offering suggestions for their practice. There is a constant concern to provide teachers with tools to demonstrate the relevance of what they teach, relating the topics to each other and to their applications.

    Distribution of the first volume in the series began in January 1997 and aroused considerable interest throughout the country. The first edition, of 2,000 copies, sold out in six months. The state of Ceará, for example, acquired 750 copies for distribution to all teachers in its network. The Pró-Ciências programs in Ceará, Pernambuco, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Santa Catarina, and Goiás use this same book.

  2. Program details
    • Course Organization

      The program consists of two modules, covering selected topics from all three grade levels. In each module, the first activities take place during school breaks.

    • Training development

      The group to be trained will consist of 100 teachers. Each of the two modules will be implemented over one semester of the year, according to the schedule below:

      Module 1: January to June
      Module 2: July to November

      Each module begins with a week of full-time training. Daily activities consist of lectures in the morning and group work in the afternoon. At the end of the week, each group of teachers receives an assignment involving problem-solving and the creation of additional teaching materials.

      In the three months following the start of each module (March, April, and May for the 1st module, and August, September, and October for the Mondays module), one-day follow-up meetings are held on a Sunday of each month for critical discussion of the work developed by the groups.

      Teachers will be evaluated at the beginning and end of each module. The evaluations will aim to measure the evolution of the teachers' knowledge and attitude towards the topics studied. The initial evaluation will consist of a general test to assess the teacher's familiarity with the central themes of high school mathematics. The final evaluation will consist of homework plus a written test, which will aim to determine the extent to which the teacher took advantage of the opportunity to observe the ideas presented by the instructors.

      All activities are developed at IMPA.

  3. Team

    The team responsible for preparing and implementing the two modules that make up this project consists of:

    • Augusto César Morgado
    • Eduardo Wagner
    • Elon Lages Lima (coordinator)
    • Paulo Cezar Pinto Carvalho
    • Maria Celano Maia (executive secretary)
    • Priscilla Fernandes Pomateli (secretary)

    This group has been working together for several years on activities related to mathematics education, such as the publication of the Mathematics Teacher's Magazine (which has existed for 14 years), the Mathematics Olympiads (regional, national and international), the authorship of several books on secondary school mathematics and, mainly, the conception and implementation of this program.

  4. Schedule

  5. Enrollment

  6. Previous Programs