Chapter 17 Case 14: Building Community Through Collaborative Observation: Structures and Moves to Intervene on Biases and Support More equitable Instruction

Building community in professional development with practicing teachers often takes place in the context of a building-based professional learning community where teachers from one school come together to share work and problem-solve in their own context. Although these communities can be supportive and fruitful for participating teachers, they can also be logistically challenging and, depending on building or district culture, can impede teachers from sharing their views and challenges honestly with colleagues, particularly around issues of equity and justice in teaching. When we think of community, we are not referring either to groups with geographic similarities or groups that are only a part of the same social system, but rather groups that develop relationships that “produce a strong sense of shared identity” (O’Donnell, 1997), in our case around issues of mathematics teaching and equity, through shared experiences, discussion, and shared learning. We also see belonging as a key part of community. As you will see in our case, we utilize Block’s definition of belonging as acting “as an investor, owner, and creator” of the space and “to be welcome, even if we are strangers” (Block, 2018, Communities that Work for All, para. 1). In this case, we will share an example of cross-country community building in professional development (PD) that supports practicing teachers to bring their authentic selves to community discussions and problem solving centered on conceptions of what counts as mathematical knowledge and skill; noticing, naming, and disrupting patterns of oppression in mathematics classrooms; and building collective knowledge of both teaching practice and mathematical knowledge for teaching.