Not much seems different 14 years later, if I must judge based on a current review of research on the role of practicum in mathematics teacher education, conducted within the TRACE project – except that Turkey seems to be doing a fair amount of research in the field.
Pondering our work on the desired teacher and work both in mathematics teacher education and teacher education more generally, I contemplated if a connecting focus could be the development of the new teachers' professional judgement. Perhaps like this?
Why these particular satellite topics?
As argued in the TRACE project, teacher education would
benefit from a critical reflection on its applicability by improving our
understanding of how teachers utilise learning from teacher education in their
profession. Hence the dimension ‘tracing teacher education’.
International research has focused on student teachers,
practising teachers, and even teacher educators learning to better notice
learner thinking (e.g., Amador & Carter, 2016; Walkoe, Sherin, & Elby,
2019). This is utilised in formative assessment.
Key in professional judgement is the consideration of the context of learners and students. With the population diversification in Sweden, socio-cultural issues need to be addressed in teacher education. This applies equally to what student teachers learn about this, and to the approaches of teacher education itself. However, there is very limited international research on this in relation to mathematics teacher education.
Our review of research on the practicum indicated that the quality of mentoring is vital to student teachers’ learning. The same review pointed to the importance of the meeting between theory and practice. However, research on ways to facilitate this meeting is diffuse, and the notion of theory within the field is extremely vague.
There are good indication that engagement with the visions
of good teaching and a critical engagement with the nature of mathematics are
pivotal to student teacher learning (Corey, Peterson, Lewis, & Bukarau,
2010; Jankvist, Clark, & Mosvold, 2019).
There is much to continue contemplating ...
Iben
References
Amador, J. M., &
Carter, I. S. (2016). Audible conversational affordances and constraints of
verbalizing professional noticing during prospective teacher lesson study. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-016-9347-x
Corey, D. L., Peterson,
B. E., Lewis, B. M., & Bukarau, J. (2010). Are There Any Places that
Students Use Their Heads? Principles of High-Quality Japanese Mathematics
Instruction. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 41(5),
438-478.
Jankvist, U. T., Clark,
K. M., & Mosvold, R. (2019). Developing mathematical knowledge for teaching
teachers: potentials of history of mathematics in teacher educator training. Journal
of Mathematics Teacher Education, 1-22.
Walkoe, J., Sherin, M.,
& Elby, A. (2019). Video tagging as a window into teacher noticing. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education,
1-21.
