Investigating Secondary Mathematics Preservice Teachers’ Instructional Vision: Learning to Teach Through Pedagogies of Practice

The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in a cohort of secondary preservice teachers’ (PSTs) vision of the role of a teacher within the context of a mathematics methods course designed around pedagogies of practice. We analyzed data collected in the first and last 2 weeks of the course, consisting of recordings of small- and whole-group discussions, PSTs’ written work, and individual interviews. We first coded using Munter’s Role of Teacher rubric and identified significant differences between beginning-of-semester data and end-of-semester data. We then conducted three rounds of constant comparative analysis resulting in four themes that describe the changes in visions of role of teacher. Findings indicate that engaging in pedagogies of practice in preservice education has the potential to influence PSTs’ visions of their role as mathematics teachers. This study extends both the literatures on pedagogies of practice and on teachers’ instructional vision.

Mathematics Teachers’ Knowledge, Networks, Practice, and Change in Instructional Visions

An instructional vision is the discourse that teachers or others currently employ to characterize the kind of “ideal classroom practice” to which they aspire but have not yet necessarily mastered. In mathematics education, prior work has demonstrated relations between teachers’ instructional vision and a variety of aspects of their classroom practice and professional pursuits. We examined what might contribute to teachers’ development of mathematics instructional visions through a quantitative analysis of a longitudinal data set collected in four urban school districts. Controlling for instructional vision in the prior year, we found middle school mathematics teachers’ current instructional vision to be related to their prior mathematical knowledge for teaching, their prior instructional practice, and their colleagues’ prior instructional visions—with the strength of the relation depending on the density of teachers’ advice networks. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for both inservice teacher professional development and preservice teacher education.