ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of research and literature that establishes the need for teacher professional development experiences that help to teach toward closing the achievement gap, describes a case study of a professional development experience based on Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) aimed at supporting teachers to develop capacities in culturally potent math instruction, and suggests how professional development for teachers can be potent, meaningful, effective and powerful, within the realm of actual classrooms. The term culturally potent is used in this case to describe an intense, short-term professional development experience designed to powerfully instruct and model for teacher participants a transformative method that addresses students’ diverse needs thereby improving students’ success. The primary research objective was to explore how CGI professional development contributed to practicing teachers’ ability to become more confident, skilled, and/or receptive to addressing the diverse needs of their students.
