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The Impact of the Lead Teacher Professional Learning Community Within the Rice University Mathematics Leadership Institute

Abstract

"Now in its fourth year, Rice University's Mathematics Leadership Institute (MLI) has developed over
sixty high school mathematics Lead Teachers. We focus on how membership in MLI has impacted
participant teachers' professional lives. The Lead Teacher community that emerged during MLI's first
Summer Leadership Institute embodies the characteristics of a sustaining and coherent knowledge
community where teachers are able to share their secret "stories of practice in safe places... in order to
make their personal practical knowledge explicit to themselves and to others" [1]. This article includes
stories of individual teachers who refused to sacrifice hours of instructional time for mandated
curriculum testing, who encouraged and supported a large group of MLI teachers to participate in a
grueling advanced certification program, and who challenged the local administration's expectation to
compromise personal professional standards. These stories may not have emerged in their particular
ways had these teachers and their supporting co-manager not been members of this coherent and
sustained knowledge community. This knowledge community has enabled the achievement of MLI
goals with respect to teachers' increased mathematics content knowledge, leadership development, and
student achievement. We also include focus group comments and quantitative data."