Joyce Mgombelo
Research agenda
1
There is agreement in teacher education on the importance of learning from experience.
Following this contention, student teaching among other things such as field experiences and
school observations, remains a very important part of most teacher education programs.
However, while many teacher education programs include student teaching in preservice teacher
education, there is increasing evidence from the literature that practicing teachers as well as
prospective teachers continue to experience and talk about a gap between theory (University
courses) and the lived experiences (practice) of teaching (Grimmet & MacKinnon, 1992).
In mathematics education this problem is compounded by reforms in school mathematics
such as those reflected in National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Curriculum and
Evaluation standards and Principles and Standards (NCTM, 1989, 2000). In the light of the
NCTM standards, the role of teacher education is to enable teachers to choose worthwhile tasks;
orchestrate classroom discourse; create a learning environment that emphasizes problem solving,
communication and reasoning; and develop the ability to analyze their teaching and student
learning. While mathematics teacher educators are making changes in their programs to take
account of the reforms there is no evidence of their impact on prospective teachers during their
internships. There is an indication that student teachers revert to conventional forms of teaching
during their internships. This is not surprising in mathematics education where it is noted that
practicing teachers are also struggling with teaching reform mathematics (Boaler, 2003). This
begs a question in mathematics teacher education: In what ways can student teaching
experiences or teaching practices be supported to make them more educative for both student
teachers and practicing teachers?
There is a growing literature in the use of technology as a tool for reforming and
improving teacher education programs (Capper, 2001). The common theme running through this
literature is that technology provides medium for new forms of pedagogical relations, new
collaborative practices and new forms of learning communities.
The literature on the use of technology in teacher education provides some indication on
how technology environments might be used to support learning in teacher education programs.
However little attention has been paid to the relationship between the supportive technology
environments and what preservice students or practicing teachers are learning. What is the nature
of this learning? In addition very little is known in terms of the nature of structures of these
technology environments and their relationship to worthwhile education tasks that may bridge
the gap between theory and the teachers lived experiences of teaching.
This short oral representation will discuss preliminary results of an ongoing research project
designed to address these questions. The project involves a number of preservice mathematics
teachers as they participate in technology structured mathematics education tasks during their
student teaching. As well the research involves some practicing teachers as they engage in these
activities as part of their professional development. Specifically the study addresses the
following questions:
1. In what ways can technology environments be structured to make student teachers and
teachers learning from their practice more educative?
2. What kinds of worthwhile mathematics teaching tasks might these technology
environments support?
3. What is the relationship between these mathematics teaching tasks and student teachers’
and practicing teachers’ classroom teaching experiences?
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Convention