A Working Model for Inservice Training

Abstract

Michael A. Topper is an Instructor of Mathematics at Parkland College, Champaign, Illinois. He has been active in the area of staff development and in 1973 became the coordinator for the Parkland College Staff Development Program. He received his M.A. in 1965 from the University of Maryland and has been teaching college level mathematics since 1966. The need for inservice training for community college teachers has recently been identified as one of the Nation's educational priorities in the seventies. It is considered to provide the best opportunity for community colleges to renew and expand their programns.1 The Illinois Community College Mathematics Workshop Program (ICCMWP) is an effective working model which responds to this need. This is a cooperative program involving thirty-one Illinois community colleges outside the Chicago Area and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and sponsored by the National Science Foundation. It consists of a sequence of six two-day workshops dealing with problems in the area of mathematics instruction at the community college level. The first four workshops have already been held. In 1970, the directors of the program initiated a survey of the educational and professional needs of the two-year college teachers in Illinois. The program philosophy and organization were developed as a direct result of this survey. Fundamental to the philosophy of this program is the direct involvement of the participants. They serve on the planning teams that organize each workshop; they act as group leaders and panelists during the meetings, and they serve on the writing teams that prepare the results of the workshops for publication. While each workshop has some of its own special objectives, all of the workshops share the following general ob-