Theory in teacher education

A colleague and I have just completed a review of existing literature on attempts to improve the theory-practice connection in mathematics teacher education, and we were surprised to see that theory hardly ever was defined, yet different notions of theory prevailed.

The most common notion was “the guidelines for teaching which are presented on campus, and which student teachers must go implement in schools”. Contrast this with referring to theory as something that helps unpack events in the classroom.

Therefore, it was nice to see that theory was foregrounded in the new book European Didactic Traditions in Mathematics. However, as in many articles on theory before it, the book engages theory in relation to research in the field, not – as far as I can tell from the parts, I have read so far – what theories, if any, from mathematics education student teachers could benefit from encountering. Sometimes, it is implicit in references to teacher education being research based, but still …

If there is a debate going on out there somewhere about this, I would love to hear about it. In the meantime, we can start our own!

/Iben

Reference:

Blum, W., Artigue, M., Mariotti, M.A., Sträßer, R., Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M. (Eds.) (2019). European Didactic Traditions in Mathematics: Introduction and Overview. Springer Open.

The PASEC14 report

"The assessment shows that a non-negligible proportion of pupils in all countries have a teacher who has received no pre-service teacher training." (PASEC24 report, p. 121)

It is easy, sitting in Sweden, to forget how different the situation is in other countries. But the recent report from PASEC reminds us how much of an uphill battle getting an education is for learners in many countries. Girls who do not go to school, learners who must work on the land, ...

I could mention that in Togo, 67.2% of early primary school learners have a teacher with no teacher education, or I could point to that 72.7% of early primary school learners have a teacher with 2 years+ of teacher education. The extremes are not important, the overall picture is.

What would we offer in a teacher education program if we only had 6 months to work with?

https://www.pasec.confemen.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Rapport_Pasec2014_GB_webv2.pdf