Multiplicative reasoning task design in teacher education with student teachers in Scottish schools: valuing diversity, developing flexibility and making connections

ABSTRACT

This article considers the development of synthetic landscapes of multiplicative reasoning constructed by student teachers (pre-service teachers). It explores the implications of working in a way that integrates literature from Maths Recovery, Cognitively Guided Instruction and Realistic Mathematics Education approaches. The aim is to better understand how working in this way affects student teacher interactions with learners, the questions they ask, the tasks they design; their capacity to value diversity in literature and develop their flexibility in practice. The findings indicate that this embodied approach to task design within teacher education led to all student teachers engaging in a participatory view of learning mathematics, discussing a range of strategies and models used by the children. Although many student teachers experimented with different pedagogical approaches and were beginning to design their own tasks, very few understood the underlying relational structures between a series of connected tasks within number strings or investigations.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• professional development
• multiplicative reasoning
• task design
• inclusive practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen Martin

Helen Martin is a Lecturer in Mathematics Education at the University of Aberdeen. Her research and teaching are based on the design principles ‘valuing diversity, developing flexibility and making connections’ with an emphasis on how ‘others’ make sense of doing mathematics, the relational understanding that comes from the human/social patterns in people (children and teachers) becoming, being mathematicians, belonging within a community.