Abstract

In order to investigate ways pre-service student teachers (PSTs) might learn to teach with high-level tasks and effectively incorporate student thinking into their lessons a teaching experiment was designed and carried out by the cooperating teacher/researcher (CT). The intervention was for the CT to interject into the lessons of the PSTs during moments of opportunity. By interjecting a small question or comment during the lesson the CT hoped to support the learning of both the students of mathematics in the class and the PSTs. This in-the-moment interjecting was meant to enhance and underscore the situated learning of the PSTs within the context of actual practice. Essentially the PSTs learned how to manage and improve the discourse of the classroom in the moment of the discourse. This study utilized both an ongoing analysis of the data during collection in order to inform the instruction provided by the CT and a retrospective analysis of the data in order to develop an understanding of the developmental sequence through which PSTs progressed. The results suggest the interjections provided to the PSTs served multiple roles within the domains of mathematical development for the students of mathematics and pedagogical development for the PSTs. A classification of the interjections that occurred and the stages of development through which PSTs passed will be discussed. Implications from this work include increased attention to the groundwork leading up to the student teaching experience as well as an adjustment to the role of cooperating teacher to be more that of a teacher educator.

Degree

College and Department

Physical and Mathematical Sciences; Mathematics Education

Rights

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