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.
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