Paul Betts

Transforming Images of Mathematics / Teaching: a Study of Pre-service Teachers / Teaching Paul Betts

This project explores pre-service teacher's experiences with learning, teaching and the nature of mathematics during an elementary mathematics curriculum course. I focus on interpreting student participants' evolving images of mathematics/teaching, to make sense of my own evolving images of mathematics/teaching. This inquiry is framed by principles of complexity, which is a post-positivist and holistic framework for interpreting social phenomena. The methodology is oriented by narrative inquiry, which is a means to notice and interpret the co-constructed storied experiences of others and self. As a result of student participant data analysis processes, an interpretive lens emerged for understanding a student's evolving images of mathematics/teaching in terms of co-negotiating tensions, dissonances and contradictions among available narratives within a participant's apparent experiences. My interpretations of student stories are a means of understanding my own story as a negotiation of competing narratives. The processes and products of this inquiry may provide insight into the complex question of teachers changing and changing teachers.