Interaction, Imagination and Community Building at the Math Forum

Abstract

This chapter draws upon contemporary social theory to make an argument about the ways that teachers create personalized communities of practice at The Math Forum, an online educational resource center. The discussion of social networks and personalized community is brought into dialogue with sociologically oriented strands of math education research to suggest that the collaborative community building work that Math Forum teachers do online allows them to not only form a learning community but allows them to overcoming tensions around mathematical identity formation which are important for advancing one’s thinking as a math teacher. The chapter discusses some of the interview data conducted with math forum teachers and the importance of that information for the future of teacher professional development and the way an online community can support teacher learning.