Conducting Mathematical Thinking Activities with Secondary Teachers

Focusing on the environment of learning of a PD course and on teacher’s classroom work the aim of this study was to find links between what teachers learned about Mathematical Thinking Activities (Wiskundige Denkactiviteiten – WDA) with their work in classroom. Therefore the study attempted to identify similarities changes or empowerment on teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge (knowledge about how to teach a subject) and teacher’s professional competence (person’s ability to transfer knowledge into action) (Maass K.; Doorman M.; pg. 890; 2013). In order to carry on the research the study was developed in Netherlands under the two research questions: • In terms of changes in teachers' practices when working with a WDA activity how are the empowerments of teaching approaches? Which changes emerge on these approaches? • To what extent does a WDA course contribute to the empowerment of teachers’ competence in working with inquiry learning? On this study WDA specification is related with an Inquiry – Based way of teaching and learning. Thus it was expected that teachers could recognize and/or develop WDA tasks with characteristics of Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) Theory.