Crisan, C; Rodd, M; (2014) Talking the talk…but walking the walk? How do non-specialist mathematics teachers come to see themselves as mathematics teachers? In: Hobbs, L and Törner, G, (eds.) Taking an international perspective on "out-of-field" teaching: proceedings and agenda for research and action from the 1st Teaching Across Specialisations (TAS) Collective Symposium. (pp. pp. 25-26). TAS Collective: Porto, Portugal.

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Abstract

In order to address the shortage of mathematics teachers in England, the UK government has funded various in-service subject knowledge courses for practising teachers, who are not mathematics specialists. These courses aim to develop these teachers’ mathematical subject knowledge (e.g., DfE 2014). In this TAS session we will report on a research project which was set up to investigate how teachers on the in-service programmes offered by our institution developed as teachers of mathematics. We orientated our research around a central research query: How do already qualified, non-specialist mathematics teachers come to see themselves as mathematics teachers? Our previous work (Crisan and Rodd 2011) found that at the end of the course these teachers’ mathematical work showed that they still lacked fluency with mathematics and were far from having secure subject knowledge. However, familiarity with and learning of new maths topics on the course increased their confidence in themselves as learners of mathematics. As the non-specialist mathematics teachers’ confidence in their own mathematical ability increased, we noticed a change on how they talked about themselves as potential mathematics teachers. The teachers became preoccupied with whether and how they will be recognised as mathematics teachers by their colleagues on the course, current school or potential employing schools and mathematics departments. We have many forms of data from the course participants: mathematical work, interviews, teaching observations, written narratives, for example. Analysis of data considers the participants’ developing mathematics teacher identity in terms of ‘engagement, imagination and alignment’ (Wenger 1998). We will be presenting excerpts from some of our case studies to illustrate how the participants negotiated their own trajectories of learning towards a new identity, that of mathematics teachers.

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