The first three years of teacher education (cycle 1) should enable all students in grades 1-7, and those who choose mathematics as a subject in grades 5-10, to teach mathematics in school. Student teachers should learn general pedagogical principles, they should learn what it is like to stand in a classroom and teach mathematics, and they should learn about how students understand and learn mathematics – and how they can best support all students in the learning process. At the same time, the student teachers, who often come straight from upper secondary school, should themselves gain a deep knowledge of mathematics. In other words, there is a lot to be learned during 30-60 credits. In the MaTEN project, we build on the concept of core practices (Grossman et al., 2009), which are actions that are repeated often in teaching, that have the potential to support students’ learning, and that student teachers can master and learn from. We will collaborate with teachers to identify core practices that it is appropriate to work with in mathematics teacher education. These must be accessible to student teachers and rooted in both research and practice. We will then develop activities for how to work with these core practices in courses on campus, and during the students' school placement.

We will build on the knowledge from Work Package 1. We will also build on literature on working with core practices in teacher education and on our own previous experiences with such work, through several projects. Collaboration with teachers is central to the development work. The teachers will help identify core practices, and later follow up with student groups in practice as part of the project. The collaboration itself will also be part of what we study.

The overall theoretical basis for the study is the framework learning to teach in a community (Hammerness et al., 2005). There, student teachers’ development is described using five components: a vision of what good teaching is, tools they can use in teaching (material and theoretical), understandings of mathematics and learning mathematics, practices to use, and dispositions towards mathematics and mathematics teaching (including identity perspectives). We also plan to employ cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT, see Engeström, 2015) as a way of studying what happens in the process where different communities meet and work towards a common goal. As the work progresses, there will probably be a need to supplement with other theoretical inputs.

The sub-study has the following overarching research questions:

2.1. What visions, dispositions, understandings, tools, and practices for mathematics teaching can serve as a foundation for strengthening PSTs’ professional development in mathematics teacher education?

2.2. How can courses in Cycle 1 be designed to support PSTs’ professional development? How can this be extended to design principles for course design in Cycle 1?

2.3. How can MTEs and mentor teachers collaborate to develop a common ground for mathematics education courses in Cycle 1?

The development of common foundations (core practices, etc.) will take place in the fall of 2026, and development work in the courses will take place in the period spring 2027–spring 2029. The development work in the courses will be design research (Bakker, 2018) where we always have two overarching iterations. We will go into courses in both grades 1-7 and 5-10 with the possibility of following the students over several years. The study will run in parallel at NTNU and HVL Stord in collaboration with the schools that are partners in the MaTEN project.

References

Bakker, A. (2018). Design research in education: a practical guide for early career researchers. Routledge.

Engeström, Y. (2015). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press.

Grossman, P., Hammerness, K. & McDonald, M. (2009). Redefining teaching, re‐imagining teacher education. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 15(2), 273–289.

Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., Bransford, J., Berliner, D., Cochran-Smith, M., McDonald, M., & Zeichner, K. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358–389). Jossey-Bass/Wiley.