A successful implementation of educational changes depends on teachers' professional learning, and their ability to translate innovative ideas into practice. Although teaching, by its very nature, is a complex practice, most teachers work in isolation, making their own planning and decisions, and solve pedagogical problems with limited consultation with and feedback from their colleagues.
The past decade has seen increasing demand to improve school mathematics, which, as a result, generated a need for teachers to join forces and share individual knowledge and experience with the community. Thus, the need to nurture mathematics teachers' communities of practice became a primary goal.
Wegner (1998), who coined the term "community of practice" (CoP), maintains that in order for a community to be recognized as a CoP, a combination of three characteristics, cultivated in parallel, is necessary:
(i) The domain: A CoP is identified by a common domain of interest;
(ii) The community: A CoP consists of members who are engaged in joint activities and discussions, help each other, share information, and build relationships that enable them to learn from one other;
(iii) The practice: Members of a CoP are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources, such as experiences, stories, tools, and ways of addressing recurring problems, thus learn with and from each other.
In general, national communities of mathematics teachers conform to Wegner's first two characteristics: they definitely share an interest in mathematics, its teaching and learning, and in many countries they meet in professional conferences, read professional journals, and share a professional jargon enabling them to learn from one another. However, the third characteristic, to a large extent, is still missing in many communities of mathematics teachers, as only few develop a shared repertoire of resources. Even those communities of mathematics teachers who do develop such resources usually count on leaders of the community to put together such resources for the benefit of the entire community.
In light of the above, the proposed Discussion Group will focus on issues related to the formation of a mathematics teachers' CoP and to the on-going handling of such CoP from both theoretical and practical points of view.