About

Hilda Borko is an Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and a Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Her research explores teachers’ instructional practices, the process of learning to teach, the impact of teacher professional development programs on teachers and students, and the preparation of professional development leaders. Her current projects include partnerships with local school districts aimed at improving teaching and professional development in mathematics and science, as well as building capacity within these districts to prepare and support professional development leaders, with a focus on providing enduring robust learning opportunities for all students. She holds affiliations with CTE in Mathematics Education and Teacher Education, as well as Learning Sciences and Technology Design (LSTD). Her research interests encompass Math Education, Professional Development, Science Education, and Teachers and Teaching.

Research topics

• Mathematics education
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Medical education
• Medicine
• Social Science
• Engineering
• Linguistics
• Geography
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• From Professional Learning to Preparing Professional Learning Facilitators

  Research in mathematics education · 2026-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• From a niche to the norm: a framework for action to empower collaborative education research

  Frontiers in Education · 2025-12-10

  articleOpen access

  Educational leaders and researchers have stressed the value of centering communities in research. Yet, substantive research collaborations have remained the exception rather than the rule. Critical, organizational, and learning theories suggest the need to modify research systems, organizations, and infrastructure for the broad adoption of collaborative paradigms. We present a framework for normalizing collaborative research in the field of education: a desire for research impact animates these changes and will require actions that support egalitarian funding, power-leveling design, deliberate learning opportunities, expansive communication, and justice-aligned incentives. We build on the work of the Collaborative Education Research Collective to explore our framework through a sample of eight researchers’ vignettes describing their collaborative learning experiences. We find that authors center their narratives on individually compelling experiences with research impact, design, and learning opportunities. However, less emphasized action areas of our framework—funding, communication, and incentives—highlight the importance of expanding from individual to organizational change. Our findings and illustrative examples serve as a charge to proactively advance the role of research in creating more liberated educational futures.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Learning to Facilitate Framework: A model for preparing professional development facilitators

  HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2025-02-04

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  International audience

  PublisherOA PDF

• Novice Teacher Leaders’ Facilitation of Video-Based Discussions of Mathematics Teaching

  Mathematics Teacher Educator · 2025-09-01

  articleSenior author

  We examined how highly rated novice teacher leaders facilitated video-based discussions in Problem-Solving Cycle workshops and found similarities and differences in their ways of contributing to discussions, fostering high conceptual depth. Some leaders consistently encouraged teachers’ participation and solicited ideas through questioning, whereas others contributed more of their own analyses. A discussion trajectory emerged, linking conceptual depth to the cognitive complexity of teacher leaders’ facilitation moves. We offer professional development recommendations based on these findings, emphasizing diverse strategies for enhancing video-based discussions in the Problem-Solving Cycle.

  PublisherDOI

• Thematic Working Group on the Professional Practices, Preparation and Support of Mathematics Teacher Educators, TWG27

  European Mathematical Society Magazine · 2024-11-15 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  In this issue presented by the group leaders Ronnie Karsenty, Bettina Rösken-Winter, Stefan Zehetmeier, Birte Pöhler-Friedrich, Hilda Borko and Alf Coles

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Research–Practice Partnerships and Video-based Learning

  2024-03-14 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter concerns research–practice partnerships as an approach to support longer and more significant uptake of instructional changes targeted in professional development for teachers. It starts off by outlining recent research that summarizes state-of-the-art on research–practice partnerships, before it goes on to outline the authors’ approach to research–practice partnerships in their own project, “A Research-Practice Partnership to Develop Math Professional Development Leaders and Build District Capacity”. The chapter explains two interconnected models used in that project that support the use of video: one for teacher learning and another for leadership development. The authors share how a thoughtful design of research–practice partnerships can contribute to build the capacity within the district to sustain the video-based professional learning models over time. They also discuss the benefits of a research–practice partnership from both a district perspective and a research perspective, before outlining some of the challenges encountered along the way in their project. The chapter concludes by discussing how working in partnership enhanced the role of video in their project.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  New ICMI studies series · 2024-01-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st author

  This Introduction describes the scope and aims of ICMI Study 25: Teachers of Mathematics Working and Learning in Collaborative Groups and provides a brief overview of each chapter in the Study volume. The primary aims of the Study are to report the state of the art in mathematics teacher collaboration with respect to theory, research, practice, and policy; to represent teachers’ experiences and learning through their own voices as well as the voices of researchers; and to suggest new directions of research. Four chapters in the Study volume summarize the ideas about mathematics teacher collaboration generated by the theme Working Groups with respect to theoretical perspectives; contexts, forms and outcomes; roles, identities and interactions of participants; and tools and resources. Five chapters present the perspectives on these topics by invited plenary authors and reactors, and the plenary panel of teachers. The final two chapters offer reflections on the Study themes and chapters in this volume by invited commentators. Future directions of research in mathematics teacher collaboration are also discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Meta-coaching: A novel approach to supporting the practice of mathematics coaches

  HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2023-07-10

  articleOpen access

  International audience

  PublisherOA PDF

• Using a Practical Measure to Support Inquiry Into Professional Development Facilitation

  Mathematics Teacher Educator · 2023-09-01 · 4 citations

  article

  Despite the complexity of facilitating professional development (PD) and growing attention to supporting facilitators, few tools exist for facilitators to engage in ongoing inquiry into their practice. In this article, we offer a practical measure, the Collaborative Professional Development Survey (CPDS), designed to provide facilitators with information about teachers’ perceptions of aspects of the PD learning environment that research indicates matter for teachers’ opportunities to learn. We illustrate how facilitators used the CPDS to support their collective inquiry into facilitation. We also illustrate the social processes that appeared to enable facilitators’ productive use of the CPDS, including a routine to analyze the resulting data, and the orientations that underpinned their analysis. We discuss implications for facilitators’ use of the CPDS.

  PublisherDOI

• The indispensable role of the goal construct in understanding and improving teaching practice

  Professional Development in Education · 2023-06-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Teacher research tends to focus on either teacher cognition or actions, or both. However, an understanding of cognition or behaviour that does not take multiple goals into account is incomplete. We integrate insights from self-regulation research in a goal system model and a methodology for eliciting teachers’ goal systems representations (GSRs). GSRs are personal constructs that show how people connect hierarchies of goals to actions in pursuit of tasks. The insight that multiple goals mediate the influence of cognition and context also has consequences for developing support for teacher learning. To illustrate the use of GSRs, we use the case of a biology student teacher who taught practicals in a cookbook manner and was supported to redesign her cookbook practical into a more open scientific inquiry practical. The case illustrates how GSRs can be used to understand a teacher’s practice and to develop support that bridges for the teacher the gap between current and target practices. Such support shows the teacher how they can adapt their practice to make it more in line with the target practice, and how this contributes to attaining their goals better. Additionally, we describe practical variants of the bridging approach for groups of (student) teachers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Refining a Model with Tools to Develop Math PD Leaders: An Implementation Study

  NSF · $3.1M · 2015–2021

• Collaborative Research: Understanding and Cultivating the Transition from Arithmetic to Algebraic Reasoning

  NSF · $3.0M · 2001–2007

Frequent coauthors

• Brian M. Stecher

  RAND Corporation

  21 shared

• Dan Liston

  18 shared

• Jennie Whitcomb

  16 shared

• Jennifer Jacobs

  14 shared

• Karen Koellner

  10 shared

• Michael Jarry-Shore

  North Carolina State University

  9 shared

• Richard J. Shavelson

  Stanford University

  9 shared

• Rebekah Elliott

  Oregon State University

  8 shared