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Making progress in justice, equity, and diversity in post-secondary teaching and learning requires systemic change. The development of novice instructor professional knowledge is a critical subsystem of the undergraduate mathematics education system. Novices play key roles in instruction and have the potential to play key roles in change efforts later in their careers. Yet,there is little in the way of theory to support research and development in this area. In other fields, professional development that engages novices in building skill at self-sustaining, generative change as professionals is the ground in which agency for change is seeded and nurtured. We describe two dimensions of professional skills for interacting with ideas and people: decentering and interconnecting. In this report, we explore and illustrate the role of these dimensions in professional development for novice college mathematics instructors. 

Those who lead the preparation and assessment of novice college mathematics instructors for teaching (Providers) do their work in many ways (e.g., course coordination, seminars,workshops). Using data from a large national survey, this study examined reporting among 95 Providers about the structures of their departments, their goals for the professional development work they do, and their relative valuation among goals. Respondents completed a sorting and ranking activity about professional development goals and answered an open-ended question describing their sorting decisions. Qualitative coding identified six main themes for the respondents’ 285 descriptions. Quantitative analysis used the rankings of goals within respondents’ sorting categories to examine how Providers describe and value professional development goals related to professional community, classroom and department culture, and instructor response to students within their classrooms. 

The purpose of this report is to share a conceptual model useful in the design of professional learning about teaching for university mathematics faculty. The model is illustrated by examples from a particular design effort: the development of an online shortcourse for faculty new to teaching mathematics courses for prospective primary school teachers. How novice mathematics teacher educators grow as instructors is an emerging area of research and development in the United States. At the same time, it is well established that effective instructional design of any course, including a course for faculty, requires breadth first: understanding and anticipating the needs of the learner. Therefore, given the sparse knowledge base in the new arena of mathematics teacher educator professional growth, effective design requires leveraging the scant existing research while also exploring and iteratively refining broad goals and objectives for faculty learning. Only after a conceptual foundation is articulated for what is to be learned and what will constitute evidence of learning, can cycles of design productively examine and test-bed particular course features such as lesson content, structures (like scope and sequence), and processes (like communication and evaluation). In the example used in this report, several researchbased perspectives on learning in/for/about teaching guided design goals and short-course objectives. These valued perspectives informed creation and prioritization of principles for short-course design which, in turn, informed evaluation of faculty learning. With these conceptual foundations in place, design of lessons to realize the goals, principles, and objectives rapidly followed. The work reported here contributes to the knowledge base in two ways: (1) it addresses faculty professional development directly by describing and illustrating a model for supporting instructional improvement and (2) it provides metanarrative to scaffold the professional growth of those who design professional learning opportunities for post-secondary mathematics faculty.