Jean-François Maheux

School Experience During Pre-Service Teacher Education from the Students’ Perspective

A challenge for teacher education is to understand how pre-service teachers learn from experience in multiple contexts- especially when their own schooling, the university methods course, and their practicum experiences can produce conflicting images of teaching. This chapter examines how pre-service teachers interpret their school experiences in the light of their university pre-service courses, their personal histories, knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, and the specific constraints of the school environment.

Creating Learning Opportunities for Teachers and Students: A Cultural‐Historical Understanding of Classroom Research

Abstract There is considerable agreement about the fact that the presence of researchers in the classroom mediates teaching and learning. Why should two very different forms of human activity, one designed to study the other, interact and mediate each other? In this article, we propose cultural‐historical activity theory as a framework for understanding the opportunities that arise for students and teachers from the presence of researchers in the classroom. From the perspective of cultural‐historical activity theory and the concept of expansive learning, we articulate the significance of making use of the affordances that arise with the presence of researchers in educational settings. We analyze three vignettes from our research in elementary mathematics classrooms for the purpose of illustrating a cultural‐historical activity theoretic explanation of the interaction. We conclude by suggesting that the “impact” of research can be increased at least locally when participants capitalize on the opportunities that arise for teaching and learning when researchers are present.

The stakes of movement: A dynamic approach to mathematical thinking

Standard approaches to thinking in the mathematics curriculum depict it as the result of some stable constructions in the mind of the person, constructions that are the results of individual efforts in the mind of subjects or of collective efforts that are then appropriated by and into the mind of individuals. Such work does not appreciate what Vygotsky actually said about thought: that it is one part of a self-moving flow that relates to another part, speaking, without that one can be reduced to the other or the whole. Grounded in the works of Châtelet, Badiou and others, we exhibit the movement of thinking in a case study of graphing. In our account, there is a primacy of the Saying and drawing over their traces, the Said and the graph.

Looking at the Observer: Challenges to the Study of Conceptions and Conceptual Change

In a typical study of students’ conceptions and conceptual change, researchers analyze what a student does or says in a classroom or in an interview and recognizes ideas that match or do not match their own understanding of the topic. Attributing the perspective they recognize in the student, those studies support the idea that a conception is the way by means of which an individual intrinsically conceives (of) a given phenomenon. They then hypothesize the existence of some mental structures that can be theoretically and objectively re-constructed based on what is observed in a student’s performance. Thus, researchers studying conceptions commonly assume that the observer and the observed are separate entities. However, even in the most theoretical and hardest of all sciences, physics, the independence of the measured object and the measuring subject is not taken for granted: Light, for example, will present itself as waves or as particles depending on how we examine it. The artificial sense of separation from the object(s) of study found in many accounts on students’ conceptions makes irrelevant the relationship that exists between the observer and the observed: an interdependence and co-emergence of the observer and the observed. This tight relation exists because each participant not only reacts upon what others say but also acts upon the reactions that his/her own actions give rise to. With this situation come epistemological, practical, and ethical implications for those researching in mathematics and science education. Positing or questioning the existence of an objective reality mediates how we accept or reject another human being and the worldviews s/he develops. It provides a rationale that guides our actions. This is especially important when it comes to teaching and learning at a time where the ability to deal with the plurality and diversity of human culture have emerged as significant referents for our social behavior.