Selecting a professional learning structure is important. No single professional learning structure can accomplish every goal. Structures such as coaching, collaborative planning, weekly grade level meetings, professional learning sessions, and Math Labs each create different conditions for educator learning. The important question is not which structure is best, but which structure is best suited for the learning we are trying to support.
As former classroom teachers who now support teacher learning, we think carefully about the professional learning structures available to us. Professional learning structures offer different possibilities, and while each can serve an important purpose, not all structures are equally suited to every learning goal.Here, we explore why Math Labs is an especially powerful tool for supporting a particular type of educator learning.
Selecting the Right Structure for the Goal of Supporting Teachers to Strengthen Instructional Decision-Making
We’ve all experienced learning something new related to our teaching, feeling excited to try it with students, and then discovering that things don’t unfold the way we imagined once we step into the classroom. A discussion falls flat. Students respond in unexpected ways. A representation that seemed clear during planning suddenly creates confusion. In these moments, we are left making sense of complex situations while simultaneously deciding what to do. We may conclude, “Maybe this works for other teachers, but not for me,” or we try again independently, making small adjustments along the way. But often what is needed is not simply more information or more effort. What is needed is a structure that pulls teachers out of isolation and creates space to experiment, reflect, and learn alongside others. This is why choosing the right professional learning structure matters.
Because taking new learning and putting it into practice is complicated, one goal we can have for teacher learning is help them strengthen instructional decision making within the complexity of actual classroom practice. To do this teachers need opportunities to study teaching and learning together while it is happening. As described in Learning Together (Kazemi et al, 2024, p. 52), Math Labs are “anchors for introducing and making sense of the big ideas related to instruction and student learning. They are concentrated, immersive learning experiences for teachers, usually in their grade level teams, along with a coach, principal, and specialists [who] delve deeply into honing their instructional decision making skills and practices.” In this sense, Math Labs are not designed as stand-alone events. They are structures that allow educators to collectively investigate student thinking, instructional choices, and the relationship between curriculum, teaching, and learning over time.
Why Math Labs Matter
This is where Math Labs can become a particularly powerful tool. Math Labs create opportunities for teachers to connect professional learning directly to classroom practice. They provide a shared space where teachers and school leaders work toward a common instructional goal, anticipate how students might think, what language they might use, or what strategies they might choose, and then study that learning together as it unfolds in real time. Rather than navigating the complexity of teaching alone, participants experience it collectively. When students respond in unexpected ways, teachers have opportunities to pause, reflect, and consider possible next moves with colleagues. The learning is no longer abstract or separated from practice; it happens within the actual work of teaching and learning, and in community.
Math Labs create an anchor for collective learning because they provide educators with a shared experience grounded in actual classroom practice. But the power of a Math Lab does not come from the Lab itself. It comes from how the experience is connected to coherent professional learning before and after the classroom observation. A Math Lab should function as part of a larger learning system; a through line that connects professional learning, collaborative planning, classroom practice, coaching, and reflection over time.
Consider a second-grade team preparing to teach comparison story problems. They come together for a day of inquiry and job-embedded professional learning. This team of teachers are wondering what representations students might use and how they might help students connect those representations to the story context. During the first part of the Math Lab, teachers solved the mathematics themselves, studied student thinking, and explored the tape diagram representation embedded in their new instructional materials. They then have an opportunity to study these ideas in the complexity of real classroom instruction. Together, they observe how students interpret the context, the representations students choose, where confusion emerges, and how instructional decisions shape student thinking in the moment.
The learning does not stop when the lesson ends. Following the Lab, the coach works alongside teachers to analyze student work, rehearse questions, select and sequence student strategies, and plan instructional responses connected to what they observed together. Teachers continue trying these ideas in their own classrooms and then meet the following week in grade level collaboration with new questions and new evidence of student thinking. In this way, the Math Lab is not an isolated professional development event. It is one instructional learning structure within a coherent system designed to support ongoing teacher learning and improvement in practice. When schools and districts treat professional learning structures, such as Math Labs, as isolated events rather than interconnected parts of a larger system, opportunities for deeper instructional growth are often lost.
The Right Professional Learning Structure
Math Labs are not the right tool for every educator learning goal. If the purpose is to share information, model a lesson, or communicate a technical change, other structures may be more appropriate. Also, a one-time Math Lab disconnected from ongoing learning or involving educators who do not regularly work together is unlikely to support deeper changes in practice. Math Labs are most powerful when they are connected to a larger instructional focus, embedded within ongoing professional learning, and grounded in relationships and collective responsibility for student learning. The value is not simply in the structure itself, but in how its structure supports the specific kind of learning we are trying to develop. The question is: which professional learning structure is the right tool for the job?
The ideas in this post are influenced by the following scholars: Elham Kazemi, Jessica Granger, Teresa Lind, Becca Lewis, and Allison Fox Resnick
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