Research Methods Vol.2-457 ARTICULATING THE RELATION BETWEEN TEACHERS ’ LEARNING IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THEIR PRACTICE IN THE CLASSROOM: IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN RESEARCH

In this paper, our goal is to address a conceptual challenge that arises as researchers conduct design experiments to support and understand teachers ’ learning. This challenge centers on articulating the relations between teachers ’ learning in professional development and their practice in the classroom. In our view, designs for supporting teachers ’ learning necessarily involve suppositions and assumptions about such relations. These suppositions and assumptions shape not merely the goals for teachers ’ learning but the actual process of their learning and the means of supporting and organizing it. By drawing on our own design research experience we propose a bi-directional conceptualization that, in our view, profoundly influences all three phases in a design experiment. The design research methodology has become increasingly prominent in mathematics education and related fields in recent years. A program of design research that is aimed at supporting teacher learning involves engineering the process of supporting teacher change through iterative cycles of design and research (Brown, 1992). In this process, conjectures about the trajectory of the teachers ’ learning and the means of supporting it are continually tested and revised in the course of the experiment. In this highly interventionist activity, decisions abou