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Understanding teachers’ self-

sustaining, generative change in the
context of professional development
M. Franke, Elizabeth Fennema

Teaching and Teacher Education

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 ¹eaching and ¹eacher Education, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 67—80, 1998
( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain.
0742-051X/98 $19.00#0.00
PII: S0742-051X(97) 00061—9

UNDERSTANDING TEACHERS’ SELF-SUSTAINING,

GENERATIVE CHANGE IN THE CONTEXT OF
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

MEGAN LOEF FRANKE

University of California, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

THOMAS CARPENTER and ELIZABETH FENNEMA

University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, U.S.A.

ELLEN ANSELL
University of Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A.

JEANNIE BEHREND
Fresno State University, CA, U.S.A.

Many current reform recommendations draw on
the view that knowledge evolves at a rapidly
accelerating pace and thus, learning fixed bodies
of information and static skills is no longer a pri-
ority. Students need to acquire knowledge that
can be adapted so that it serves as a basis for
solving problems and acquiring new knowledge.
In the same way, we begin to conceptualize
teacher change not as acquiring a fixed set of
teaching skills or learning how to use a particu-
lar program of instruction. The kind of change
we envision involves teachers changing in ways
that provide a basis for continued growth and
problem solving—what we call self-sustaining,
generative change. Self-sustaining, generative
change does not involve acquiring a set of pro-
cedures to implement with fidelity; rather it fre-
quently entails teachers making changes in their
basic epistemological perspectives, their know-
ledge of what it means to learn, as well as their
conceptions of classroom practice. It means con-
ceptualizing teacher change in terms of teachers
becoming ongoing learners (Borko & Putnam,
1996; Dana, et al., 1997; Schifter, 1997; Sherin,
67
1997; Richardson, 1995). This conceptualization
of teacher change may then lead to reconcep-
tualizing professional development for teachers.
Self-Sustaining, Generative Change
In order for change to become self-sustaining,
teachers must begin to engage in practices that
have built-in support for the changes they have
made; otherwise, the changes are likely to erode
over time. For example, when teachers begin to
allow students to discuss alternative approaches
for solving a mathematics problem, the teachers
often observe that students can generate a variety
of productive, interesting and unexpected solu-
tions. These discussions provide the teacher sup-
port in continuing to allow students to generate
and discuss their own solutions to problems.
Here there is support for the teacher to continue
the practice but not necessarily support to learn
more about the practice. For change to become
generative, teachers must engage in practices
that serve as a basis for their continued learning.
68 MEGAN LOEF FRANKE et al.
We propose that for practice to serve as
a basis for continued growth a teacher must
struggle to understand the nature and effects of
his or her own learning process. Simply observ-
ing that a practice is effective is not sufficient.
For example, as a teacher tries out a particular
practice and notices that the practice
‘worked’—the children responded appropriately
to the task—the teacher decides that the practice
was worthwhile and should be continued. This
focus may encourage a teacher to use new tech-
niques or activities, but it does not allow
teachers to understand why the practice worked
and what conditions are necessary and sufficient
for success. When teachers only know that
a practice works, they can only implement the
practice. Adapting the practice or instituting
a similar practice in a new context, however,
may prove difficult. It is in developing an under-
standing of their practices in relation to their
students’ learning that teachers develop the un-
derstanding necessary to generate new ideas. If
a teacher struggles to understand why the stu-
dents are successful, how they are solving prob-
lems, how their thinking develops, and how
instruction might help students to build on their
current conceptions, connections are made, un-
derstanding develops and the potential for more
connections becomes possible. Thus, there exists
a basis for the teacher to learn and continue to
grow.
Discovering successful practices and ana-
lyzing practices in relation to student learning
requires teachers to be engaged in some level of
inquiry. Because this inquiry is tied to their
teaching practice we think of it as practical in-
quiry. Virginia Richardson (1994) introduced the
idea of practical inquiry, which she distinguished
from formal research: ‘‘Practical inquiry is con-
ducted by practitioners to help them understand
their contexts, practices and in the case of
teachers, their students (p. 8).’’ Practical inquiry
can be viewed as a teacher questioning and re-
flecting about his/her practice with a specific
focus. The focus of a teacher’s practical inquiry
determines what a teacher sees as critical, and
what constitutes an opportunity for reflection.
A teacher who searches for successful practices
can be seen as engaged in practical inquiry at
a level of experimentation about what works.
A teacher who examines his or her practices in
relation to his or her own thinking and the
thinking of his or her students engages in a dif-
ferent level of practical inquiry, where the focus
is on detailed analysis. As teachers engage in this
detailed analysis, they come to understand prin-
cipled ideas that can then drive their practice
and their continued practical inquiry. We view
the first level of practical inquiry as leading to
self-sustained change but the second level of
practical inquiry as necessary for generative
change.
Professional Development and Self-Sustaining,
Generative Change
A concern for self-sustaining, generative
change shifts the focus of professional develop-
ment from the factors that initiate change to
principles that make it possible for teachers to
continue to learn and grow. Brown and Cam-
pione (1996) argue that focusing on the prin-
cipled ideas that guide research and practice is
critical. They state, ‘‘Without adherence to first
principles, surface procedures tend to be
adapted and ritualized in such a way that they
cease to serve the ‘thinking’ function they were
originally designed to foster’’ (1996, p.291). It is
not enough, however, to understand the prin-
ciples that guide a particular teacher develop-
ment program. In order to understand the effects
of a teacher development program, it is neces-
sary to understand how the participants in the
program construe and implement the principles.
Teachers, as well as students, do not simply
assimilate knowledge. Teachers in teacher devel-
opment programs may construct interpretations
of a program’s first principles that are quite
different from the principles intended by the
designers of the program.
Whether change for a particular teacher be-
comes self-sustaining and generative depends
not just on the principles inherent in a profes-
sional development program but on the under-
standing of the principles constructed by the
teachers. Thus, teacher change may not be cap-
tured in the experiences the teachers have en-
gaged in but in the meanings they have
constructed. The experiences serve as a back-
drop for understanding teachers’ conceptions of
the principles. However, within a given ap-
proach to professional development, teachers
may develop different conceptions of the first
 Self-Sustaining Generative Change
principles of the program. Thus, in order to help
more teachers change in self-sustaining and gen-
erative ways, it is critical to understand the alter-
native conceptions that teachers may form in
professional development programs that are de-
signed to foster that kind of change. In this
paper, we explore the changes of three teachers
who participated in the same four-year profes-
sional development project. The three cases il-
lustrate the ways in which teachers’ engagement
in practical inquiry related to the fundamental
principles of the program influenced their ability
to achieve change that was self sustaining and
generative.
Focusing on Students’ Thinking as a Basis
for Change
A number of current professional develop-
ment projects foreground student learning so
that teaching becomes viewed in the context of
what and how students learn (Barnett & Sather,
1992; Brown & Campione, 1996; Shifter, 1996;
Shifter & Fosnot, 1993). A focus on student
learning provides a natural basis for engaging in
practical inquiry. As teachers examine their stu-
dents’ learning, they think about how to build
on the learning that occurs and then reflect on
their roles and the roles of their students in the
process.
A focus on student learning is the basis for
Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI; Carpenter
et al., 1996; Fennema et al., 1996). The first
principle of CGI is that teachers develop a basis
for understanding and building on their stu-
dents’ mathematical thinking. Corollaries of this
principle are that teachers learn from listening to
their students and struggling to understand
what they hear. Because understanding and
building on students’ thinking requires teachers
to engage systematically in inquiry that draws
on general knowledge about children’s thinking
together with their practical knowledge of class-
room practice, we think of it as teachers engag-
ing in practical inquiry.
Cognitively Guided Instruction(CGI)
Within CGI, we engage teachers in learning
about the development of children’s mathemat-
69
ical thinking within particular content domains.
The theme that ties together our analysis of
students’ mathematical thinking is that children
intuitively solve word problems by modeling the
action and relations described in them. By devel-
oping this theme, we portray how basic concepts
of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and div-
ision develop in children and how they can con-
struct concepts of place value and multidigit
computational procedures based on their intu-
itive mathematical knowledge (for elaboration
see Carpenter et al., 1996).
Our engagement with teachers is driven by two
principles: (1) focus interactions with teachers on
the principled ideas underlying the development
of children’s thinking about mathematics, and
(2) build on the teachers’ existing knowledge. We
attempt to provide an environment for teacher
learning that offers opportunities for teachers to
build on their existing ideas to create continually
evolving organizing frameworks of children’s
mathematical thinking.
Whenever we interact with teachers, be it in
a group working session or in a one-on-one
interaction, we focus on children’s mathematical
thinking. We have particular knowledge about
the development of children’s thinking that we
would like teachers to come to understand. In
coming to understand this thinking, the teachers
create their own ways of organizing and framing
the knowledge. They also think hard about the
relationship between this knowledge and their
teaching. We try not to direct the ways in which
the teachers choose to implement their teaching
practice. There does not exist one way of imple-
menting CGI. Our intent is not to get teachers to
adopt a set of teaching behaviors or moves.
Rather we provide a framework so teachers can
think about their students’ understandings of
mathematics and then make instructional deci-
sions based on the underlying principles. We
strive to create inquiry about teaching moves so
teachers are thinking about why they would do
certain things and how that relates to the chil-
dren’s thinking. When a teacher asks about
classroom management, we often ask the teacher
what he or she thinks and then follow that with
another question that relates his or her class-
room management question to his or her stu-
dents’ mathematical thinking. In working with
teachers, we recognize the importance of not
excluding other issues that teachers identify, but
70 MEGAN LOEF FRANKE et al.
it is the development of children’s thinking that
drives our responses.
Method
This study reports on the process of change
that occurred over a four-year period for three
teachers. These teachers represent different tra-
jectories in terms of the level of engagement in
practical inquiry and in their patterns of self-
sustaining, generative change.
Sample
The three teachers involved in this study were
drawn from a larger sample of 21 first-, second-
and third-grade teachers (Fennema et al., 1996).
These three teachers characterized the different
patterns of change that we saw across the 21
teachers. The three teachers taught in two differ-
ent schools. These two schools, along with
a number of schools, volunteered to participate
in a teacher development study. Ms. Nathan and
Ms. Carroll worked in the same city school with
273 students. Approximately 70% of the stu-
dents in the school were white and 26% were on
free and reduced lunch. Ms Andrew worked in
a rural school with a population of 412 predomi-
nately white children (99%). All of Ms Nathan,
Ms Carroll and Ms Andrew’s colleagues at the
same grade level also participated in the larger
teacher development study. Ms Nathan taught
third grade, returning to full-time teaching after
years of substituting. Ms Carroll taught second
grade and was in her first year of teaching. Ms
Andrew also taught second grade and had been
teaching for 9 years.
¼orkshop Interactions and ¹eacher Support
¼orkshop sessions. The workshops during
Year 1 and Year 2 focused teachers’ attention on
the research-based knowledge related to the de-
velopment of children’s mathematical thinking
in addition/subtraction, multiplication/division,
and place value, fractions and geometry (See
Carpenter et al., 1996 for description of the
workshop content). In working with the
teachers, we attempted to build on their existing
knowledge about children’s thinking. We have
found that teachers often have acquired, through
their teaching, information about children’s
thinking. Teachers often do not use this know-
ledge, however, because it is not structured in
a meaningful manner (Carpenter, et al., 1988).
Therefore, we showed the teachers videos of
children solving problems. We asked them to
discuss what they had seen. Teachers shared
their own students’ solutions to an assigned
problem like the ones seen in the video. Then
teachers worked in small groups to sort the
student work in terms of the development of the
children’s mathematical understanding. We con-
sistently engaged the teachers in tasks that (a)
helped them think about how their students
would solve particular problems, (b) pushed
them to discuss their thoughts so we could
understand their thinking, and (c) helped them
organize their own thinking about the develop-
ment of children’s thinking. (See Fennema et al.,
1996 for a more complete description of the
workshops).
Community interactions. The workshops with
the teachers provided one avenue of teacher
learning. The teachers also learned through their
interactions with the students and their col-
leagues. We wanted the teachers engaged in CGI
to have an opportunity to work together, both
within and outside of their school communities.
Therefore, in the overall project we worked with
teachers from five schools. Ninety percent of the
kindergarten through third-grade teachers at
each school had agreed to participate. All of the
teachers from the five sites participated in the
workshops together. This arrangement created
opportunities for teachers to work with col-
leagues within and across their grade level, both
within and across schools. The decision to work
with substantial numbers of teachers within each
school also created pressure for some teachers to
participate who may not have originally planned
on participating. In each school the principal
also participated in learning about CGI and
spent some time listening to children’s math-
ematical thinking within the classrooms of their
school.
Beyond working in workshops across schools
we wanted to allow for ongoing support in
teachers’ classrooms and in discussions that oc-
curred outside the classroom in their schools.
Within each school, an experienced CGI teacher
became the mentor teacher. The mentor teachers
had a half-day release each week. The specific
 Self-Sustaining Generative Change
type of support varied depending on the mentor
and the teacher, but included observing in the
teacher’s classroom and discussing the children’s
thinking, planning lessons together, and assess-
ing children together. Yet, the mentor teacher
was not the only source of support within the
school; the teachers provided this support for
each other as well. The teachers operated as
sounding boards for each other as they thought
about how to use knowledge of children’s think-
ing in classroom practice.
Research staff. The final source of support for
the teachers came from our more individual in-
teractions with the teachers. A graduate student
researcher interacted with each teacher; in most
cases the same graduate student served all of the
teachers in a given school. The project staff
visited each teacher’s classroom informally on
a regular basis. In Years 1 and 2 informal visits
occurred on average once every two weeks. In
Year 3, the visits occurred less frequently, on
average once a month. During these visits the
staff would take field notes and interact with the
teacher regarding the mathematical thinking of
the children in her classroom.
Assessment
We collected information on the teachers
through interviews, informal interactions and
formal and informal observations. These data
were collected in the spring of Year 0, prior to
teachers’ involvement in the current project, and
again in Years 1, 2, and 3 as the teachers engaged
in the project.
Interviews. We conducted two types of formal
interviews with the teachers. The first type,
a general belief interview, took place at the end
of each school year. Within the general belief
interview teachers discussed: (a) how they would
introduce a particular concept, (b) how they
would introduce a particular symbol, (c) their
goals for student learning about mathematics
during the year, and (d) their views of their role
and the role of their students.
The second, a post-observation interview,
took place following two days of observation in
the teacher’s classroom. To begin the interview,
the researcher put forth a description of the
problems posed during the most recent observa-
71
tion. This allowed the researcher and the teacher
to discuss and come to a consensus about what
had occurred during the lesson and set a context
for the remainder of the conversation. The
interviewers’ questions focused on: (a) what
the teacher felt she or he was attempting to
accomplish during the lesson, (b) why the
teacher chose a particular course of action, (c)
what the teacher had learned about the students
and (d) how the teacher planned to use what she
had learned.
Observations. Each teacher’s classroom prac-
tice was documented through observation. Dur-
ing formal observation we requested that the
teacher work with whole numbers so we would
have some consistency across data points. These
observations took place over two days at five
different points in time. The first observations
took place in the Spring of Year 0 before
teachers had participated in the first CGI work-
shop of this project. The remaining observations
took place at the beginning and end of Year 1,
the end of Year 2 and Year 3. Trained observers,
knowledgeable about CGI, conducted the obser-
vations. We created verbatim transcripts of each
classroom observation using field notes and two
audiotapes of the observation.
Analyses
The data, collected over the four-year period
on each of the teachers, were analyzed over
a three-year period. Analysis involved develop-
ing a coding scheme that elaborated teacher
change within CGI (see Fennema et al., 1996 or
Franke et al., 1997 for a description of the
scheme). We examined teacher development in
terms of the teachers’ beliefs, knowledge and
classroom practices. After completing initial
analysis on all teachers and coding for reliability,
we choose three cases for further analysis. We
divided each case into time segments. We then
analyzed each segment in more detail using the
framework created for the earlier analysis. After
this step, we developed hypotheses related to the
teachers’ development. We used the differences
in the three cases to elaborate both our hypothe-
ses and our culling of the data. We then cycled
through the data several more times each time
testing our hypotheses and creating new elabor-
ated hypothesis along with examples to either
72 MEGAN LOEF FRANKE et al.
support or disconfirm them. We report our cur-
rent hypotheses and data.
Results
The results section describes the abbreviated
stories of Ms Nathan, Ms Carroll, and Ms
Andrew.2 In each case, we trace the teacher’s
development from the beginning of this project.
The cases are organized by time sequence. With-
in each case, specific points in time are high-
lighted in order to illustrate the changes made by
the individual teacher. Our goal here is to pro-
vide a flavor for how teachers’ listening to their
students’ mathematical thinking can lead to
self-sustaining, generative change.
The cases of Ms Nathan, Ms Carroll and Ms
Andrew begin to demonstrate the role that lis-
tening to and understanding children’s thinking
can play in developing self-sustaining, generative
change. The teachers differed fundamentally in
their engagement in practical inquiry. For Ms
Nathan, hearing her students’ thinking before
her formal instruction occurred allowed her to
begin to rethink her beliefs and classroom prac-
tice. Ms Nathan was surprised, not only by what
her students could already do, but also by the
fact that what they did fit with what she had
learned about children’s thinking. Ms Nathan
now had a reason to listen to her students and to
create opportunities for them to share. Ms
Carroll engaged her children in thinking about
mathematics and believed it was important to
use her children’s thinking to make instructional
decisions. Yet, she focused on her practice with-
out engaging in inquiry related to the specifics
of the children’s mathematical thinking. Ms
Andrew successfully listened to her children
from early on in the process of change. She could
describe in detail the thinking of her students,
why it was important for her to understand her
students, and how what she knew about the
students fit into a broader framework of chil-
dren’s mathematical thinking.
Ms Nathan
¹he beginning. During the first year of the
project, Ms Nathan told us that she was not
convinced that implementing CGI would enable
her to reach her goals for her students. Ms
Nathan told us that she had two separate com-
ponents to her mathematics instruction: a seg-
ment of what she considered ‘doing CGI’ and
then the continuation of her existing mathemat-
ics teaching. She stated that she wanted the
‘experiences’ she provided for the children ‘to be
meaningful’ so she incorporated word problems,
demonstrated strategies using manipulatives
and talked through procedures. In examining
the Year 1 data, we found no examples of Ms.
Nathan questioning a student about a strategy.
¹he change in ½ear 2. The major turning
point in Ms Nathan’s change process came dur-
ing Year 2. Ms Nathan told us that she took the
multiplication and division word problems dis-
cussed in the workshops and used them at the
beginning of the school year. She told us that she
was not planning to start with multiplication
and division content until later in the year but
she wanted to pose some of the word problems
to the children and see what they could do. Ms
Nathan reported that she tried to let the children
solve them in any way that they wished. At this
point Ms Nathan was having some difficulty
articulating her thoughts, but in the following
segment she tells of her use of these problems
and how she posed them without the ‘drilling of
facts’ (without her intervening with a strategy).
And even in the early sets of problems I put multi-
plication-type problems. Multiplication and division
with the... the word problems. So, originally with
these problems they [the students] used counters and
manipulatives at the same time they were doing addi-
tion and subtraction. Without really doing any drill-
ing on facts and that sort of thing.
Posing problems without providing the children
with a strategy allowed Ms Nathan to learn about
her children’s mathematical thinking and see
that the children could solve problems without
explicit instruction, using a variety of strategies.
Continuing the change. Following this episode,
Ms Nathan’s practice began to look different as
did her discussion of the children’s mathematical
thinking. Ms Nathan provided the children op-
portunities to solve a variety of problems and
allowed them to discuss how they were thinking
about them. Instead of intervening with chil-
dren, she allowed them to persevere in their own
strategies. This was particularly evident when
Ms Nathan interacted with children who were at
an impasse. Here, Ms Nathan would generally
 Self-Sustaining Generative Change
ask a question, reread the problem or make the
problem context more explicit.
Ms Nathan: [Ms Nathan posed the word
problem to the class. She was
walking around the room lis-
tening to the children attempt-
ing to solve the problem and
interacting with different chil-
dren. She stops next to Danny
and rereads the problem.]
Bailiff Louis is standing at the
drawbridge. He collects 26
coins. So Bailiff Louis collected
26 coins on each of 3 days. So
each of the 3 days he collected
26 coins at the drawbridge.
We’re doing the one on the
board. OK, he turned in 67
coins to Sir William. Was that
the right amount?
Danny: I don’t know how to do it.
Ms Nathan: Think about it; think how he,
what?
Michelle: [Trying to clarify meaning of
problem.] Um, 26 coins on
each of 3 days, and then each,
in 3 days or
Ms Nathan: N-, no, it means on Monday he
collected 26, on Tuesday he
collected 26, and on Wednes-
day he collected-
Danny: Add all those?
Ms Nathan: I’m not going g-, I’m just giving
you the clues, telling you what
actually happened, Danny. So
on Monday, he collected 26,
Tuesday 26, Wednesday 26. It
was at the drawbridge. His job
was to collect the fares or the
tariffs. He turned over 26, he
turned over 67 coins. That
means he gave Sir William 67
coins. ‘‘Was that the correct
amount?’’ Don’t answer yet.
Let’s give people space to
work. [Pause] ‘If not, what
happened?’ [Ms. Nathan
moves to Jenny] OK.
This type of interchange was not seen at all
in Ms Nathan’s prior observations. In the past,
73
Ms Nathan would have been happy that Danny
had said, ‘add all those’ and would have gone on
to tell him how to set up the problem.
At the end of Year 2, Ms Nathan had grown in
both her beliefs and classroom practice. She
posed problems to her class that allowed them to
explore their mathematical thinking. She pro-
vided the students opportunities to talk about
their mathematical thinking, and she resisted
interrupting the children and telling them how
to solve a given problem. However, as
Ms Nathan would have told you, she continued
to struggle. She felt that it was having access to
specific problems to pose that helped her to
change.
I’m sort of a practical person by nature, and I guess
the things that helped the most were some of the
practical things you gave us, the problem types, see-
ing the kids on the video tapes. I think I am less
philosophical at this point in my life. So particularly
when you gave us the different multiplication types
and division types, and we could use those to inte-
grate with problems that really worked well.
Ms Nathan was beginning to reflect on her
children’s thinking in relation to her own think-
ing; she was beginning to engage in practical
inquiry related to the development of children’s
mathematical thinking.
And so maybe that’s a more sophisticated thing [a
class of strategies] that I need to lead kids into. And
sometimes I think I know them [the children] well,
but when I design things I don’t know them as well as
I think I do. Or I see that their mind doesn’t work the
same way as mine does...And I didn’t know as much.
It takes me a while, you know. But I think I do know
these kids better.
She realized that her expectations were often
not in line with the children’s thinking and that
the way the children thought about the prob-
lems was not the way she might.
Ms Nathan’s change. Ms. Nathan started to
listen to her students. She appreciated that her
students could invent strategies. She changed
her role and listened to students’ strategies
rather than showing them what to do. When Ms
Nathan experimented to see what her children
could do, her beliefs and classroom practice
changed. Ms Nathan sustained her change
throughout the remainder of the project. How-
ever, it is unclear whether Ms Nathan’s change
will become generative. We do not know if
74 MEGAN LOEF FRANKE et al.
Ms Nathan will focus on analyzing and making
conjectures about her children’s mathematical
thinking or will use that thinking as the basis for
her instructional decisions. We are not proposi-
ng that Ms Nathan will not change further. Yet,
as we shall see in the next case, moving to a level
in which knowledge of children’s thinking is
viewed as a basis for continued practical inquiry
does not necessarily come easily.
Ms Carroll
Ms Carroll initially talked in an informed way
about CGI. Her classroom had the signs of
a teacher listening to her students’ mathematical
thinking; she posed problems to her students
and allowed them to solve them in their own
ways. Yet at the end of the project, she was not
yet using what she learned from her children in
making instructional decisions. Somehow, Ms
Carroll was unable to engage in practical in-
quiry that would enable her to build on chil-
dren’s mathematical thinking in her classroom
practice.
Prior to our project. Ms Carroll learned about
CGI when she student taught with one of our
most experienced CGI teachers. Through her
experience, Ms Carroll was exposed to both the
research-based knowledge about children’s
mathematical thinking and how that knowledge
might be put into practice. In our first observa-
tions and discussions with Ms Carroll, it was
clear that she believed children could solve prob-
lems in a variety of ways. She told us she felt
strongly that children should solve problems in
their own ways. In her lessons, Ms Carroll
routinely provided students an opportunity to
solve problems and share their thinking. She
elicited different strategies and responded to stu-
dents in a way that demonstrated how she
valued all strategies. Ms Carroll said, ‘We dis-
cuss the problem and how somebody solved it.
How somebody else solved it. ‘Is one way right?’
‘No.’ ‘What’s best for you?’’.
During problem solving, Ms Carroll allowed
students to direct much of the course of events.
The children made up the problems that the
class solved, and the children elicited different
solution strategies. However, as you can see in
the statements below, Ms Carroll continued to
think about her own behaviors as she interacted
with the children. She did not talk specifically or
in much depth about her children’s thinking.
After searching all of her interviews and obser-
vations, the most specific, in depth examples
came from her post-observation interview in the
Spring of Year 3.
And I was real pleased at, you know, some of the
little odds and ends strategies that came up. And the
thought of removing the petals [how she labeled one
of the students strategies] I liked that. That was a nice
way to explain. They explained well, I thought. And
so that tells me that they are more comfortable. Just
keep them on it.
Because what you do, you listen and you file this
away [a child’s strategy] so that the next time these
come up, you know, I wanted to tell Jose, ‘‘Oh wasn’t
that a clever way that you did so and so?’’ And I’m
going to tell Max, ‘‘I really liked when you were still
kept talking about thousands 2 And so you file
away all those things that you can tell kids what
a good job they did. And then they know that, you
understand and then they’re more willing to take the
risk because they know that it was okay that they
tried. And even when people forget what they are
going to say, I say, ‘‘Oh, I’m glad you tried.’’
Keisha is not [okay with the tens concept]. She’s
direct one to one. And it’s okay for her. And she’ll just
have to keep working on it. Like, keep going over it.
She’ll get there.
In these examples, Ms Carroll commented on
strategies of specific children. She talked about
the strategies being clever, the children being
comfortable and having a nice way to explain
their thinking. She never explicitly dealt with the
substance of the strategies the students used.
Even when she talked about the place-value
knowledge of Jose and Keisha, she did it in
general terms. The generality of these comments
stands in contrast to Ms Andrew’s comments
about children’s thinking in the third case.
Ms Carroll’s change. Over four years, Ms Car-
roll changed in her beliefs about CGI. She came
to believe that she should build on what her
students knew about mathematics. But this be-
lief alone did not enable Ms Carroll to change
how she made use of children’s mathematical
thinking in her daily practice. We see this as due
to Ms Carroll’s not knowing or attempting to
understand the specifics of children’s thinking.
Although she realized that children could solve
problems in a variety of ways she never de-
veloped an understanding of exactly what the
 Self-Sustaining Generative Change
children knew. In not searching out the specifics
of the children’s thinking she missed out
on developing her own understanding about the
principled ideas — how the children’s specific
ideas were connected to one another in concep-
tual ways — that could help her make decisions.
She did not possess the understandings of
children’s thinking that would support her
belief that she should build on the children’s
thinking.
We did not see evidence of Ms Carroll engag-
ing in practical inquiry about the development
of children’s thinking. She was most concerned
that the children shared, that they each had
a way to solve the problem, and that at times the
ways they shared varied. She did not use student
thinking to help her pose particular problems, to
ask particular questions of the students, and so
on. This approach did not create problems for
Ms Carroll, except when her expectations differ-
ed from what the students actually did. Then she
would lead them down her path rather than
their own. Often her lessons and interactions
with the students provided open-ended oppor-
tunities for student learning, but they did not
build in any particular ways on the children’s
mathematical thinking.
Ms Carroll sustained her initial classroom
practices. These classroom practices allowed for
some productive learning opportunities for her
students. However, Ms Carroll’s change was not
generative for her own learning. Within the
scope of this project, she was unable to learn by
analyzing her students’ thinking. Thus, her case
demonstrates how focusing on implementing as-
pects of a project without coming to understand
the principled ideas can lead to self-sustaining
but not generative change.
Ms Andrew
The case of Ms Andrew shows how experi-
mentation about practice can entail analysis of
children’s thinking and generative change. Ms
Andrew, initally traditional in her approach to
teaching mathematics, changed dramatically in
both her beliefs and classroom practice through-
out the four years of the project. Ms Andrew
never tired of learning about her children’s
thinking, consistently seeking to understand the
details and nuances of children’s strategies. With
the specifics that she learned from her students,
75
she would reflect on her framework about the
development of children’s thinking. She de-
veloped a deep understanding of the children’s
thinking that allowed her to build on her chil-
dren’s thinking within her ongoing practice. Ms
Andrew exemplifies the notion of generative
change; she was always adapting and building
on what she knew about the development of
children’s thinking and using that as she interac-
ted with her students.
Prior to CGI. In our initial observations and
interviews, Ms Andrew operated as if she did not
realize that her students could solve problems
without being told how to solve them. She fo-
cused on getting the students to remember the
procedures she presented. Ms Andrew imple-
mented this approach well. In the first lesson
that we observed, she was working with her class
on subtraction problems that involved regroup-
ing. Ms Andrew told us that she felt it was her
responsibility to show the children strategies,
‘‘You have to show them how to regroup in
order to subtract’’. A ‘pass the chalk’ activity, in
which each child did one step in the standard
algorithm, exemplified both her classroom prac-
tice and her beliefs about the teaching and learn-
ing of mathematics.
Ms Andrew: Now we are going to learn about
the same ideas with three digit
numbers [referring to earlier work
on two digit addition problems:]
Let’s try one together [points to
the board as she talks and writes:]
23
#39
3 and 9 is what?
Ss: 12
Ms Andrew: You tell me what to do, pretend
I am the student, put down the
Ss: 2, carry the one
Ms Andrew: but where do I carry this
Ss: tens
Ms Andrew: All right, we don’t want to skip
the tens otherwise he is going to
feel bad. We go right next door,
now we add our tens [she demon-
strates on the board] that’s pretty
easy isn’t it, and remember not to
skip a column. Let’s see if we can
76 MEGAN LOEF FRANKE et al.
pass the chalk and have some-
body else come up here.
Ms Andrew carefully went over the procedure
so that all children could learn the steps. The
students actively participated in the lesson.
Their participation entailed coming to the board
and adding their step or chorally responding to
Ms Andrew’s questions. The students did not,
however, share their mathematical thinking. The
only strategy discussed throughout this and the
other observed lesson was the standard subtrac-
tion algorithm.
Following a year of CGI. When we observed
and interviewed Ms Andrew at the end of Year
1 it was not difficult to see that both her beliefs
and her classroom practice had changed dra-
matically. She posed problems in contexts rel-
evant to her students, allowed the students to
solve the problems in their own ways, provided
opportunities for them to share their thinking,
listened to their mathematical thinking, and
asked questions that clarified her own thinking
as well as theirs. Ms Andrew told us, ‘‘each kid
does what is comfortable for him and at the level
he is at; [they use] strategies that they develop
on their own, according to their comfort level
and their knowledge and their background.’’
Ms Andrew’s desire and effort to understand
her children’s mathematical thinking were not
apparent in her interactions with students prior
to CGI or in her initial interviews with re-
searchers. After a year of CGI, however, both her
interactions with the children and her state-
ments about them indicate that Ms Andrew was
learning what her children understood about
mathematics. When she did not understand
what her children were trying to tell her or what
they understood about the mathematics, she
worked to understand what they were thinking.
Ms Andrew listened to her children, asked ques-
tions to get at the depth of their understanding,
and spent time reflecting on what she had
learned.
Ms Andrew: [speaking to the class] Remember
to try these [problems] 2 ways.
[ goes to Kevin] Can you tell me
how you did that? [pointing to
student’s work on a word problem
with the structure 34#80"
——] I’d like to have you tell me
how you did that, Kevin [pointing
to the answer of 113 that is written
on his paper].
Kevin: I did it with my fingers.
Ms Andrew: How did you do that with your
fingers?
Kevin: I counted like. I counted up the 30
or 80 and then I had, and the
I counted out 2 , 34 more and
[telling, not showing].
Ms Andrew: And how did you do that?
Kevin: I counted [holds up one finger for
each count] 1, 2, 3, 2 11, 12 [al-
ternating from hand to hand] 21,
22 2 34, and then I counted 80
more. 1, 2, [starts counting fingers
again] 3, 4, 2
Ms Andrew: How did you count 80 more? [in-
terrupted as Kevin counts on his
fingers]
Kevin: 12, 13, 14, [counts by ones holding
up a finger for each number and
alternating hands] 2 80. And
I came up with 113.
Ms Andrew: I don’t understand though how
you got from 80 to 113 when you
were counting by ones. Can you
explain how you got up there?
I didn’t hear you get up to 113.
Kevin: I just counted to 80, and then
I counted this many more [point-
ing to the 34].
Ms Andrew: Can you explain how you did
that? Cuz I didn’t quite under-
stand it from the way you did it
the first time [Kevin appears con-
fused]. How did you get this num-
ber, 113 [pointing to Kevin’s
paper]. What did you do? Do you
remember?
Kevin: Hmhm [shakes head].
Ms Andrew: How could you solve that?
Kevin: Start it with my fingers.
Ms Andrew: Start it with your fingers. Is there
anyway you could show me how
you got it by your fingers. I know
you were counting 1, 2, 3, 4 up to
34, and then you counted 1, 2, 3, 4,
up to 80, but I didn’t hear how
you got up to 113 from that. How
did you do that?
 Self-Sustaining Generative Change
Kevin: I did like. I counted 80, and then
I counted this [pointing to num-
ber 34], and then I got up to this
[pointing to his answer of 113].
Ms Andrew: Could you show me how you did
that? You said you counted 80.
Did you actually count up to 80
or did you start with 80.
Kevin: I just started with 80, and then
I put that many more [pointing to
34] with 80 and came up with this
[pointing to 113 answer].
Ms Andrew: Ok, could you show me how you
started with 80 and did that many
more? I’d like to see that.
Kevin: 80, 81 [starting counting on his
thumb], 82, 83 [holding up a fin-
ger for each number and alternat-
ing hands as he counts - it is not
apparent that he is keeping track
of 10s] 2 113.
Ms Andrew: And how many more was that,
then? You’ve got 1, 2, 3 and it was
34 more. So, you’re really close
aren’t ya? If it’s, you counted 30.
I saw you count 30 with your fin-
gers, but then you needed 34 and
you counted 31, 32, 33 [pointing
to Kevin’s fingers starting with
thumb, Kevin counting along] 34.
So do you know what that would
be? You were up to 113. What
would that be if you had one
more?
Kevin: 114.
Ms Andrew: See, the first time I was really con-
fused, but now I see what you did.
Notice how often Ms Andrew asked, ‘‘how did
you do that?’’ in this interaction. She worked at
not leading the child, while at the same time
genuinely trying to understand the specifics of
how the child was solving the problem. Know-
ing that he used his fingers was not enough; Ms
Andrew wanted to know how he was using his
fingers. Consistently, as Ms Andrew engaged
with her students, as she probed, listened and
reflected, she worked on developing a coherent
picture of the students’ understandings.
Ms Andrew could describe in detail what had
occurred as different children interacted with
a given problem. For example, when reflecting
77
on a lesson in which she posed the problem,
‘124#137,’ she described the different ways
children had used knowledge of tens to solve the
problem:
One child had one hundred plus one hundred is
two hundred, he said, I know that. And then I know
that twenty and thirty is fifty, and then I know that
seven and four is eleven. Well, I saw a couple of
different ways of adding on. Allison said, well, I had
two hundred and fifty and seven more was two hun-
dred and fifty-seven. And then she counted up four
more. Okay? Then I had another child do that 2 it
was two hundred and fifty and eleven more. Well,
I know there’s another ten in eleven. So that was two
hundred six 2 and so we [the other students and I]
saw a lot of neat things out of that problem.
Knowledge of individuals’ mathematical
thinking guided the instruction in Ms Andrew’s
class. She told us more than once that she used
her notes about how children solved problems
when she was writing new problems to make
sure that she had problems that matched indi-
vidual children’s needs. When asked if anything
that occurred during a classroom observation
would help her decide what to teach next, Ms
Andrew responded at length. She focused her
response on three specific children. She detailed
the strategies they had used, and described how
she would try to get them to extend their strat-
egies to more difficult problem situations in fol-
lowing lessons.
By Year 3, Ms Andrew rarely made a decision
that was not consistent with how her students
were thinking about the mathematics. In talking
about her role she said,
I am a decision maker. I have to decide where the
kids are. And then I have to use my knowledge about
where the kids are, where they’re at in my class, you
know, it’s like the difference between knowing what
Jacob can do on one end to what Mike isn’t doing or
should be doing on the other end. Or what he is doing.
And then I have to come up with the story problems
to get these kids to use their skills, to improve their
skills. You know, to maybe, if they’re at one level, to
boost them up. To have them build on what they
already know, and yet still be confident about what
they are doing and not get frustrated about what
they’re doing. Like I said, be good listeners to each
other, to kind of piggy back off of each other. I feel
that I am more of a guide and not like a dictator.
Ms Andrew’s change. During our final formal
interview with Ms Andrew, she was quite articu-
late about CGI and her changes in relation to
78 MEGAN LOEF FRANKE et al.
CGI. Ms Andrew’s ongoing reflection was cap-
tured in part by her excitement about what her
children could do with mathematics. She found
it fun to try and understand the children’s solu-
tions and how those solutions related to ways
that other children and she herself might solve
the problems.
You know, why we ever left them [children] out of
it is beyond me, but it’s like we knew all, as teachers,
and this is what they were supposed to learn and this
is their curriculum and this is the way you had to
teach it. Well now they can do that and even more.
I mean, they’re doing even more than I ever believed
a second grader could do. You know, I often bring my
problems home and say, look at this problem. I say to
my husband, look at what this kid can do. And I brag
about it to my family and my friends whenever I can.
And so I think if anything, it’s raised my expectations
of kids at this level. You know, we’re talking about
seven year olds doing multiplication problems that
I would never have dreamt of doing. I mean, I often
give them to my fourth grade girl myself. And she has
struggled. And so I say, well, gee, these are some of the
problems my second graders are doing. So it really
makes me feel very good, the fact that what we’re
doing is right. It really reinforces that. So I’d say it’s
done a lot of changing in our thinking 2 . Even as
a teacher. You know, I’ve learned a lot just from
listening to some of these kids. I’m thinking, wow,
I never figured it out that way. But you know, I even
find myself using some of their ways. I mean, it’s
a riot 2 and that’s what’s kind of neat about this, is
that you find yourself drawing these analogies and
saying, well, what do you think about the way so and
so did it?
Ms Andrew not only sustained the earlier
changes she had made but continued to grow.
Ms Andrew continually learned from her stu-
dents. She reflected on what she had learned,
worked to figure out what it meant and what she
might do about it. Ms Andrew understood that
she needed to build on her children’s mathemat-
ical thinking, she also realized that she needed to
understand the children’s thinking in detailed
and connected ways in order to accomplish this.
Thus, Ms Andrew continued to develop her con-
ceptual frameworks related to the development
of children’s mathematical thinking and she con-
ceived of herself as a learner, learning from her
students in the context of her classroom.
Discussion
Ms Nathan, Ms Carroll and Ms Andrew had
access to similar opportunities for learning.
They engaged in the same workshop sessions,
they interacted with project staff, and they each
interacted with their students and colleagues.
However, the teachers engaged in different levels
of practical inquiry and as a consequence, we see
different patterns of change. Ms Nathan experi-
mented to see if her students could solve a multi-
plication problem. Her students were successful
so she continued to engage in this level of practi-
cal inquiry. Ms Carroll also provided her stu-
dents opportunities to solve problems and
discuss alternative solutions. However, she was
already doing this when the project began. This
type of inquiry sustained her practice but did
not provide a basis for continued change. Ms
Carroll was excited about her students’ creative
solutions to problems. Yet, because she did not
struggle to understand the children’s thinking,
she had no basis for growth, for attempting to
figure out how to adapt problems and routines
to help students expand their current under-
standing. Like Ms Nathan and Ms Carroll, Ms
Andrew initially was concerned with the prob-
lems her students could solve. However, Ms
Andrew quite quickly moved to a different level
of practical inquiry; She started focusing on the
details of what her students’ reported, and she
struggled to understand what the strategies they
reported implied about their developing under-
standing. The struggle to understand student
thinking represented a different level of practical
inquiry than we saw with Ms Nathan and Ms
Carroll, a level that provided a basis for Ms
Andrew’s continued growth. At this point we do
not know whether Ms Nathan will attain this
level of practical inquiry. Ms Carroll’s example
suggests that not all teachers readily make the
transition to the level of practical inquiry that we
saw Ms Andrew undertake.
What distinguished Ms Andrew from the
other two teachers was how she conceptualized
about her knowledge. Ms Nathan and Ms
Carroll regarded the knowledge that they ac-
quired in the teacher development program as
relatively static. They learned that children
could construct strategies to solve a variety of
types of problems. They tried out the problems
in their classes and found that their children
could solve them. In other words, Ms Nathan and
Ms Carroll engaged in practical inquiry to deter-
mine whether what they learned in the CGI classes
applied to their students. They found that it did,
 Self-Sustaining Generative Change
and this confirmation supported their continued
use of a variety of problems and classroom rou-
tines that involved children inventing their own
solutions to problems. Yet, Ms Nathan and Ms
Carroll did not view understanding their children’s
thinking as a way to continue to learn and grow
as teachers. In contrast, for Ms Andrew under-
standing each child’s thinking was a primary goal.
By struggling to truly understand each child, her
knowledge of children’s thinking continued to
grow, and her practice continued to evolve.
Growth in Professional Development
A major tenet of CGI is that helping teachers
to understand the development of children’s
mathematical thinking can provide the basis for
fundamental change in teachers’ beliefs and
practice. Similarly, we believe that understand-
ing the developmental patterns of teachers’
knowledge, beliefs, and practice is critical for
learning how to plan programs for the profes-
sional development of teachers. Just as teachers
like Ms Andrew use the development of chil-
dren’s mathematical thinking to drive their
instructional practices, the patterns of develop-
ment in teachers’ thinking and classroom practi-
ces can provide a basis for the analysis of teacher
development programs. In thinking about the
professional development for teachers, we need
to reach the level of practical inquiry that Ms
Andrew engaged in. We need to understand
what teachers are capable of and refocus our
goals for teacher development in light of this
understanding. If we are concerned with self-
sustaining, generative change in teachers, our
goals need to include fostering the kind of stance
toward knowledge that we saw illustrated in the
case of Ms Andrew.
Rather than focusing on the details of profes-
sional development, we have attempted to
understand the principled ideas that provide the
basis for practical inquiry. Beginning with our
early work, we have focused on enabling
teachers to build on their children’s existing
mathematical thinking. We hypothesized that
the conceptual framework created by re-
searchers investigating the development of chil-
dren’s mathematical thinking would be
a powerful tool for teachers. We realized that the
teachers would not simply assimilate the re-
search-based knowledge about children’s math-
79
ematical thinking, but we did not appreciate
exactly what would be involved for teachers to
reconstruct this knowledge. We now understand
that for teachers to build on children’s math-
ematical thinking they need to engage in practi-
cal inquiry that focuses on the details of their
children’ thinking and informs their conceptual
frameworks. We have seen that the ways
teachers engage in practical inquiry with stu-
dents, in their classrooms, is critical. We have
learned that we may need to place more empha-
sis on teachers’ using their emerging knowledge
to engage in practical inquiry directed at the
development of their own students’ thinking.
We do not know why Ms Andrew reached
a point where she engaged in practical inquiry
focused on understanding the development of
her students’ thinking. However, what we have
learned from Ms Nathan, Ms Carroll and Ms
Andrew does help us understand our profes-
sional development approach. We have learned
how CGI could be focused more explicitly to
engage teachers in analyzing their students’
thinking and challenging both their own notions
and the research notions about how that think-
ing develops. We have learned that we could be
more explicit with teachers about investigating
and recreating understanding of the develop-
ment of children’s thinking for themselves. We
also have learned that it is important for profes-
sional development personnel to attend to how
teachers are engaging in practical inquiry related
to the development of children’s thinking. We
have seen that struggling ourselves to under-
stand how the teachers are thinking about the
development of children’s mathematical think-
ing not only allows us to better understand
teacher development but also provides a forum
for teachers and researchers to engage in mul-
tiple levels of practical inquiry.
Conclusions
Our research suggests that professional devel-
opment focused on children’s mathematical
thinking provides a basis for teachers to engage
in ongoing practical inquiry directed at under-
standing their own students’ thinking and thus,
provides a basis for teachers to engage in self-
sustaining, generative growth. This focus creates
opportunities for the teachers’ classrooms to
80 MEGAN LOEF FRANKE et al.
become environments for continued learning
and enables teachers to connect their knowledge
of children’s thinking to daily interactions with
children. Viewing the classroom as a place for
continued teacher learning, and focused inquiry
as a way to learn within that environment
pushes our conceptions of professional develop-
ment. The critical questions become how can
professional development foster this learning pro-
cess; and how do different teachers, involved in
different professional development opportunities,
accomplish self-sustaining, generative change.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our many colleagues,
teachers and researchers, whose dedication and
insight made this project possible. We would also
like to thank those who carefully reviewed our
manuscript especially the reviewers, Hilda Borko,
Ralph Putnam and Elham Kazemi. The research
reported in this study was supported in part by
the National Science Foundation under Grant
Numbers MDR-8955346 and MDR-8550236 and
in part by the Educational Research and Devel-
opment Centers Program (PR/A R305A60007)
as administered by the Office of Educational
Research and Improvement. The opinions ex-
pressed in this chapter are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
funding agencies.
Notes
1 In our work, we do not emphasize this dichotomy be-
tween practical inquiry and formal research. If research
provides the basis for helping teachers to engage in practical
inquiry. In particular, research development of children’s
mathematical thinking (e.g. Carpenter et al., 1993; Fuson,
1992) serves as a basis for engagement in practical inquiry as
teachers build models of their students’ thinking.
2 Complete cases for each of these teachers are available
upon request.
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