Teacher Knowledge in the Era of Change

In order to revamp an education system so that it becomes a learning system, it is fundamental that (a) educators work together, (b) schools become centres of inquiry, and (c) teachers become recognized as researchers and leaders. In the era of frequent reforms, teachers are required to do more and do it differently. The ideas of professional improvement through collaborative inquiry, engagement of schools in research through school board-university collaboration, and increase of teacher agency are at the core of our work. In this chapter, we are drawing from a collaborative school board-university project run in Ontario since 2011. This ongoing project strives to emancipate teachers as holders of contextualized and practitioner knowledge, and to equip them with confidence to teach, to conduct research, and to lead. Besides being one example of an effective collaboration between two educational organizations (i.e., school board and university), this project was a stepping-stone for us co-leading a province-wide Mathematics Leadership Community of Practice.