Abstract
I am a junior academic working with teachers as part of several participatory action research projects. And yet, I was an outsider – the mathematics educator, not the teacher – “having” an expert knowledge of mathematics for teaching. How should I respond to teachers, especially novices, as they positioned me as a mathematics education expert who could answer their questions? So I took on the role of mentor. These relationships also carried an opportunity to notice qualities of our mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT). In this chapter, I seek to illuminate the tensions of a rookie researcher, as I shifted my theoretical understandings of mentoring and MKT into the practice of working closely with teachers in collaborative research/teaching contexts. Three episodes are described to illustrate the tensions that did emerge from my experiences. I draw themes from the episodes – namely, that mentoring models are incomplete, and that growth of MKT is unpredictable and problematic – which suggest that these tensions can arise for others doing work with teachers. Finally, I conclude with some reflections concerning the challenges of mentoring and mathematics teacher education.
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Betts, P. (2011). Tensions of Mentoring Mathematics Teachers: Translating Theory into Practice. In: Schuck, S., Pereira, P. (eds) What Counts in Teaching Mathematics. Self Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0461-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0461-9_2
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