Abstract
As this book draws to a close, we shall summarise its empirical basis and theoretical intent before building some further arguments based on our discussion. We commenced with a brief examination of how the teaching of mathematics in primary schools might be better understood. We looked at how some primary school trainees and new teachers conceptualised their professional challenge and how this understanding was a function of the training process and of the curriculum frameworks they encountered. The interviews that we carried out provided a way of accessing this emergent understanding whilst at the same time gaining some sense of the trainees’ personal aspirations with regard to their chosen career in teaching.
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- 1.
Nolan (2010) reports similar difficulties of trainees moving from traditional to inquiry methods.
- 2.
“To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar and agonising form power takes. To find, however, that what ‘one’ is, one’s very formation as a subject , is in some sense dependent upon that very power is quite another. We are used to thinking of power as what presses on the subject from the outside, as what subordinates, sets underneath, and regulates to a lower order. This is surely a fair description of what power does. But if, following Foucault , we understand power as forming the subject as well, as providing the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire , then power is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are” (Butler, 1997, pp. 1–2).
- 3.
See also Bordo (1999, pp. 173–191) .
- 4.
Devine (2003) discusses such conceptions of subjectivity in relation to pedagogy .
- 5.
McNamara and Corbin (2001, p. 273). NB. The National Numeracy Strategy later became known as the National Numeracy Framework.
- 6.
- 7.
Butler (1997, p. 107).
- 8.
Schafer, quoted by Felman (1987, pp. 99–100).
- 9.
- 10.
Stronach et al. (2002) .
- 11.
Lather (2003, p. 259).
- 12.
- 13.
Stronach et al. (2002) .
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Mathematics was also downplayed in earlier conceptions of English primary school mathematics , e.g. thematic approaches and published mathematics schemes.
- 16.
In some recent research carried out by Manchester colleagues into children learning mathematics there was a rather startling conclusion that if certain procedures were followed the children’s performance in tests could be improved, surely good news if we have clearly defined targets, but unfortunately this was not the whole story. The study also concluded that if these procedures were indeed followed, in particular transmissionist teaching to the test, there was also a negative consequence in the form of children being switched off mathematics, Williams (2008). More recent work suggests that they are also less prepared for university (Williams, in conversation). One interpretation of these findings, which can claim a large sample, is that longer-term facility with mathematics, enjoyment of mathematics, and exam success, are not necessarily commensurable ambitions. In the short term at least we may need to make a choice comprising fewer than all three.
- 17.
This downgrading had been partially a result of thematic approaches combining work across subject areas, arguably undermining mathematics as a subject in its own right – an earlier administrative sidelining of mathematical content within the school curriculum.
- 18.
Department for Education and Employment (1998b), Annex D.
- 19.
cf. Žižek (2000, pp. 61–62).
- 20.
- 21.
Department for Education and Employment (1999b).
- 22.
Askew et al. (1997).
- 23.
- 24.
Brown et al. (2002).
- 25.
Muijs and Reynolds (2001).
- 26.
Organisation For Economic Co-operation & Development (1999).
- 27.
This year the English government announced that it would only fund newly qualified teachers undertaking a masters degrees under its direct control (the Masters in Teaching and Learning).
- 28.
Austin (1962).
- 29.
Askew et al. (1997).
- 30.
Example Brown et al. (2002).
- 31.
- 32.
Christensen, Stentoft, and Valero (2008) discuss how mathematics teaching practices can confer power differentially.
- 33.
Herscovics and Linchevski (1994, p. 59).
- 34.
Skovsmose (2008).
- 35.
Ricoeur (1981, p. 246).
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Brown, T., McNamara, O. (2011). Implications for Practice. In: Becoming a Mathematics Teacher. Mathematics Education Library, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0554-8_7
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