Looking For Learning In Practice: How Can This Inform Teaching

Abstract

In this chapter I explore the implications for teaching of applying theories of situated cognition to the teaching and learning of mathematics in school. I use accounts of some learners’ experiences of mathematics in schools to suggest that teaching, as planning for learning, might more usefully be conceptualised in terms of planning for the development of powerful, identity-changing practices than in terms of the achievement of a range of pre-specified mathematical objectives.