Members of the Pathways author team provide 2-3 days of professional development to faculty and graduate students preparing to use Pathways materials. The professional development leaders engage faculty in completing select tasks that reveal what is involved in understanding and learning key ideas of precalculus that are critical for learning calculus.

During the workshop participants are:

  • engaged in completing select tasks in Pathways investigations aimed at
    • increasing their awareness of key reasoning abilities that will be useful for their students to acquire
    • increasing their awareness of what is involved in learning precalculus level ideas (e.g., rate of change, exponential growth).
    • improving their ability to verbalize their mathematical thinking and make sense of others’ mathematical thinking;
  • assisted in learning to evaluate and reflect on the effectiveness of their teaching
  • introduced to instructional resources provided by Pathways authors
    • pacing guide for investigations
    • online homework
    • applets and animations
    • instructor investigations with detailed notes and solutions
    • videos
  • provided opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues to determine course pacing, share instructional practices, discuss methods for holding students accountable, and determine approaches to assess student learning