OVERVIEW

This section presents four standards for the support and development of teachers and teaching:

1. Responsibilities of Policymakers in Government, Business, and Industry
   
2. Responsibilities of Schools
   
3. Responsibilities of Colleges and Universities
   
4. Responsibilities of Professional Organizations

INTRODUCTION

The Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics presents a vision of teaching that calls for a teacher who is educated, supported, and evaluated in ways quite different from current practice. To create teaching environments that encourage mathematical problem solving, communicating, reasoning, and connecting ideasin short, mathematical inquiry and decision makingteachers must have access to educational opportunities over their entire professional lives that focus on developing a deep knowledge of subject matter, pedagogy, and students. Many external forces and decisions affect mathematics teaching and school mathematics programs. Various constituencies have responsibility for the support of mathematics teachers and teaching and in building successful mathematics programs. Such support needs to be multifaceted, systemic, and reliable.

Existing support systems for mathematics teachers are as inadequate for teaching in today's society as the shopkeeper arithmetic curriculum is for educating our children to live and work in the twenty-first century. The kind and level of mathematics education required for today's students to prosper in a dramatically changed economy and in a scientifically and technologically advanced society places great responsibility on the shoulders of teachers of mathematics. At the same time our society is undergoing other dramatic changes that make teaching even more challenging. We are growing more diverse along many dimensionsethnically, culturally, linguistically, in family patterns, in the integration of persons with disabilities into mainstream institutions, and in numerous other ways (Secada 1990).

Teachers can and do implement successful mathematics programs with little help or encouragement. However, such practice should not be expected to flourish without adequate support. The changes called for by the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards and the Professional Teaching Standards need the support of policymakers in government, business, and industry; school administrators, school board members and parents; college and university faculty and administrators; and leaders of professional organizations. Each of these individuals and groups has responsibilities to help support and shape the environment in which teachers teach and students learn mathematics. The standards in this section focus on these responsibilities.