Preparing Preservice Teachers to Teach Equitably: A Longitudinal, Collaborative Interrogation of Two Mathematics Teacher Educators’ Positionalities

ABSTRACT

Just as elementary mathematics teaching is complex and lacks a single appropriate method, the same is true for mathematics teacher education. There is no consensus around the best approach to preparing prospective mathematics teachers to have a strong command of mathematical concepts, a robust understanding of pedagogical approaches, and a disposition towards children and mathematics that accounts for the historical, sociocultural, and political contexts. We designed a longitudinal, collaborative self-study to explore the experiences and perspectives of each author, their pedagogical design of mathematics teacher education, and the connections of these to prospective teachers’ readiness to teach mathematics equitably. As part of a structured reflective process, we engaged in collaborative interrogation of written accounts of our backgrounds, experiences, and instructional choices. We also analyzed, using documentation tables and code mapping, journal entries following teaching sessions and inventories of class assignments to scrutinize if learning outcomes were realized in earnest. Our findings highlight how our personal and professional experiences shape our perspectives on schooling and mathematics teaching and learning, and how we make sense of equity in these contexts. These perspectives are evident in our course design and instruction, although this interrogation has raised questions about the efficacy of our work vis-a-vis our larger goals of preparing critically conscious mathematics teachers. This self-study underscores the imperative for mathematics teacher educators to examine both the contents of their course work and field experiences, as well as understand the reasons why those instructional choices were made.

KEYWORDS:

• Elementary
• teacher preparation
• mathematics teacher educators
• self-study
• critical perspective

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We consider pedagogy to include not only instructional content and approaches, but also how teachers interact with learners, how they create discursive communities that contribute to learners’ mathematical identities, and how they represent the aims, goals, and values of mathematics education.

2. All racial or ethnic labels reflect the ways in which these individuals self-identified.