How facilitators define, design, and implement effective early childhood mathematics professional development

The call to improve mathematics outcomes for children ages zero to eight requires the development of effective professional development approaches for early childhood mathematics educators. In this study, we looked at how six facilitators created workshops on spatial reasoning, mathematical play, number sense, and theories of learning for early childhood educators. Drawing on Desimone’s components of effective professional development, we interviewed these facilitators to understand how they defined a successful professional development and how these definitions aligned with the workshops they created. Interviews showed that all the facilitators in this study designed their workshops to be engaging and interactive for their participants while drawing on the components of coherence, collective participation, and duration.