that “drew upon research in young children’s mathematical
learning to describe key stages or growth points in such development” (p. 49). The three
projects offered ongoing professional development on research-based frameworks for
children’s mathematical thinking. They ranged in duration from 1 to 3 years, focused on
whole school professional development, involved collaborations between teachers, coaches,
and students, and used individual interviews with students as a strategy to link
teacher learning with classroom practice. These authors reported growth in student
achievement, changes in teachers’ knowledge, and claimed that teachers’ knowledge of
children’s learning and how such learning can be facilitated grew through the work of the
professional development.
More recently, Clements et al. (2011) reported on a large-scale professional development
program focused on Building Blocks, a curriculum based on LTs. The authors
designed an 8-day professional development during the first year of the program implementation,
followed by five more days of professional development on the LTs for each
mathematics topic addressed during the second year of the program. Teachers engaged in
activities to learn core mathematical concepts, identify students at different levels of the developmental progression by viewing videos, and understand instructional tasks related to
the levels. They showed that teachers in the intervention group scored significantly higher
than the control group on a project-designed measure of classroom culture—a measure that
included features such as teachers’ responsiveness to children and use of emerging, in-themoment
opportunities to capitalize on students’ thinking.