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Challenges facing pre-service secondary teachers.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

The development of a sense of community is important in secondary classrooms if students are going to be able to explore and develop sophisticated mathematical reasoning. This longitudinal study was conducted over eight years and examined the kinds of challenges that pre-service secondary mathematics teachers face as they enter the practical realm of a secondary classroom. Analysis led to four categories of challenges and suggested topics that need to be addressed in methods courses and monitored during student teaching.

Introduction

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 1991) crafted a new vision for secondary mathematics classroom in which teachers help students work together to make sense of mathematics and independently determine whether something is mathematically correct using mathematical reasoning. These classrooms are described as mathematics learning communities and help students learn to conjecture, invent, and solve problems. Researchers (Arbaugh, 2003; Lampert & Ball, 1998; Grossman et al., 2001; Olson & Kirtley, 2005; Pepin, 1999) investigated different types of supports theorized to help teachers develop mathematical communities.

Arbaugh (2003) examined the use of study groups with in-service secondary geometry teachers. Results of this research indicated that the teachers felt support in several areas including: (a) building a mathematical community, (b) creating professional relationships, and (c) making connections between theory and practice. Small groups of pre-service teachers gained content and pedagogical knowledge by analyzing student work and video-tapes of themselves teaching (Lampert & Ball, 1998). Grossman et al. (2001) underscored the importance of teachers working collaboratively to deepen their understanding of content because it would be unreasonable to "expect teachers to create a vigorous community of learners among students if they have no parallel community to nourish themselves" (p. 993). These studies indicate that collaborative work among secondary mathematics teachers supports educational reform. However, Pepin (1999) found that institutional and societal constraints influenced teachers' pedagogy and interpretation of students' responses. Olson & Kirtley (2005) also suggested that helping secondary teachers implement reform practices can be challenging. They found that secondary and elementary teachers experienced cognitive dissonance when they collaboratively solved non-routine problems using multiple representations. This cognitive dissonance provoked a secondary teacher to re-examine her beliefs about teaching and learning. This re-examination led her to change her beliefs and work toward establishing a mathematical community within her classroom in which students questioned each other and posed conjectures.

Research on the professional development of secondary teachers is sparse and limited to a case-study design. The development of mathematical communities is theorized to be a critical component in secondary mathematics classroom to increase student achievement. Research is...

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