Education for the knowledge to teach mathematics: it all has to come together

Abstract

The previous chief editor of the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, Professor Barbara Jaworski, often commented that each issue of the journal seems to have its own theme or common thread, even though the articles are published more or less in the order that they are ready for publication. It is intriguing to contemplate the commonalities that seem to link together otherwise randomly written articles. This issue of the journal includes four articles that happen to be now ready for publication. The first article, by Michelle Chamberlin, Jeff Farmer and Jodie Novak, titled Teachers’ perceptions of assessing their mathematical knowledge in a professional development course, addresses a key topic in mathematics teacher education that of mathematical content knowledge. Normally teacher educators shy away from assessing the mathematical knowledge and understandings of practising teachers with whom they work, but these authors overcome the usual concerns by including specific well-designed assessments of mathematics as part of a teacher professional learning experience. The examples they chose were designed so that failure would not have been a reflection on the teachers’ past learning, thereby reducing some of the obvious threats that such assessments create. Their finding was that the assessment and the emphasis on mathematical knowledge enhanced the teacher professional learning, and was recognised as such by the teachers. The second article, by Blake Peterson and Steven Williams, titled Learning mathematics for teaching in the student teaching experience: Two contrasting cases, examines the relationship between a supervising teacher and prospective teachers during student teaching or practical placements. One of the case studies is about a restricted range of supporting actions that perhaps reflected the perspective of the supervising teacher, and the other case study describes a set of productive experiences that clearly lay the foundation for rich, reflective learning. The implication is that the supervising teacher matters, and that the quality of the student teaching placement is directly connected to immediate opportunities for teacher professional learning. The third article, by Peter Grootenboer, titled Mathematical belief change in prospective primary teachers reports a prospective teacher program that focused on facilitating