| Summary: | This study investigates the problems, tensions, and dilemmas I experienced as a
beginning teacher educator learning to teach prospective elementary teachers. Working
within the context of calls for reform in mathematics education, the study reports my
efforts of designing and investigating a pedagogy of mathematics teacher education, in
collaboration with two colleagues, which attempts to place inquiry at the focus of
teaching and learning to teach mathematics for understanding.
A major feature of the mathematics methods course, the context of this study, was
the opportunity for prospective teachers to work with students and to investigate their
own teaching.
Video taped records of class events, audio taped records of the instructors'
planning meetings, my teaching journal and field notes, and prospective teachers'
journals and course assignments were sources of data. Analysis of the complexities and
challenges I experienced as a beginning teacher educator occurred in two main phaseswhile
I was teaching the course and reflecting on my deliberations and struggles in the
"action-present" (Schon, 1987) and one year later as I study my teaching through an
analysis of what I found problematic. Such an analysis provides insights into the sense I
was making of classroom events, how I sought to resolve what I found problematic, and
what I am learning as a teacher educator of mathematics education. Narratives are used
as a way of reconstructing, interpreting, and communicating my pedagogical experiences
around three themes of questioning, listening, and responding, of resistance, and of
collaboration and investigation.
Aspects of my teaching that were found to be problematic include: choosing and
using pedagogical problems; interweaving investigations of mathematics and pedagogy;
and developing a community of inquiry. What I found problematic provided
opportunities for learning. An aspect discussed, for example, is learning about and from
prospective teachers. Issues related to problems and possibilities for teacher educators
are raised. Implicatins are drawn which focus on the preparation of teacher educators and
how teacher educators might be supported in their learning to teach. === Education, Faculty of === Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of === Graduate
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