Mary Klein

The premise and promise of inquiry based mathematics in pre‐service teacher education: a poststructuralist analysis

Many teacher educators have recently implemented inquiry based instructional practices into their programs (Crawford & Deer, 1993; Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996; Klein, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001; Schuck, 1996; Tillema & Knol, 1997). In mathematics education the promise has been that pre‐service teachers’ socialization into new interactive ways of learning will not only lead to the (re)construction of powerful mathematical ideas and relationships, but that it will facilitate the implementation of these inquiry based practices in the classroom. This promise, however, is not often realized (Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996; Tillema & Knol, 1997). One reading of why this may be so, relying on and made visible through a poststructuralist analytic lens, is (a) that perhaps the pre‐service teachers’ ability to act in inquiry‐based, generative ways in the classroom does not necessarily follow from, but is produced or constituted in, teaching/learning interactions in school and teacher education, and (b) it may be that pedagogic practices in teacher education unintentionally and invisibly reproduce old epistemologies and ontologies that support knowledge transmission and teacher authority over student authored engagement and construction of ideas. In this paper the premise of a rational, autonomous agent of change on which so much of current practice is based is challenged, and the possible implications for teacher education discussed.Many teacher educators have recently implemented inquiry based instructional practices into their programs (Crawford & Deer, 1993; Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996; Klein, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001; Schuck, 1996; Tillema & Knol, 1997). In mathematics education the promise has been that pre‐service teachers’ socialization into new interactive ways of learning will not only lead to the (re)construction of powerful mathematical ideas and relationships, but that it will facilitate the implementation of these inquiry based practices in the classroom. This promise, however, is not often realized (Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996; Tillema & Knol, 1997). One reading of why this may be so, relying on and made visible through a poststructuralist analytic lens, is (a) that perhaps the pre‐service teachers’ ability to act in inquiry‐based, generative ways in the classroom does not necessarily follow from, but is produced or constituted in, teaching/learning interactions in school and teacher education, and (b) it may be that pedagogic ...

Constructivist Practice in Preservice Teacher Education in Mathematics: (re)producing and affirming the status quo?

Abstract Teacher educators often tend to place enormous faith in constructivist approaches to teaching, which emphasise collaboration, inquiry and problem solving. With reference to my own pedagogical practices in preservice teacher education, I argue that constructivist practice may in fact cement, rather than challenge, the taken‐for‐granted cultural, sexist and racist assumptions informing teaching‐mathematics‐as‐usual. I suggest that students should experience a different mathematics; a mathematics that reveals how processes of collaboration and inquiry, based on constructed binaries, selectively constitute mathematical subjectivities. Preservice teachers and teacher educators who are aware of activities and practices which are overly regulatory and/or discriminatory might work together to re‐vision and enact an alternative mathematics: a mathematics able to challenge and disrupt the status quo.

How active involvement in learning mathematics can preclude meaningful engagement: contributions from foucault

Abstract The intention in this article is to make problematic the notion of active involvement in learning from a poststructuralist perspective. Specifically, the author argues that students are always actively involved and always learning and that such learning can have positive or negative effects. She uses the poststructuralist concept of power/knowledge within discourses such as mathematics education to argue that if we want students to be empowered or enfranchised within the discourse, it is the degree of individual engagement that matters. Engagement is measured by the degree to which students are variously able to take themselves up as authoritative speakers of the recognised ‘truths’ of the discipline or discourse, and refers directly to the power/knowledge nexus (Foucualt, in Bernauer & Rasmussen, 1987) operating in the classroom. The author takes some short examples of classroom teaching to help me think about student learning, engagement and enablement, and to hopefully open up further debate on this issue.

Foucauldian Notions of Governmentality: its influence on active involvement and collaboration in constructivist practice and action research in pre‐service teacher education

ABSTRACT In this article I refer to research conducted on my constructivist practice in mathematics in pre‐service teacher education over 3 years, 1991–93. I use Foucaults concept of ‘governmentality’ to help me re‐vision the collaborative and supportive environment for learning I attempted to provide for my students. In the concluding sections of the paper I suggest that were students made aware of this ‘governmentality’ informing all pedagogical practice(s), they may later refuse to take up those actions which potentially marginalise and exclude some students in the various educational discourses, in this instance mathematics.

Lines of Flight in Mathematics Education and Research

Postmodernism brings with it a plethora of philosophical, theoretical, and social debates about the nature of knowledge, truth, subjectivity, and power. In the timely production of Mathematics Education within the Postmodern (2004), Margaret Walshaw presents us with a tapestry of papers which, in embracing uncertainty and the instability of language and identity, opens up potential ‘lines of flight’ in mathematics education and research. As a welcome discursive event, these papers collectively energise debate, and perhaps facilitate change, in an educational enterprise desperately in need of reform yet within which we are (always becoming) subjects. Postmodern critiques offer an alternative understanding of the commonly taken-for-granted of educational change. They create a climate of challenge and inquiry in which even the seeming innocence of words can not go unchallenged (Atkinson, 2002). While there is a common perception that postmodern theoretical perspectives lack an agenda for social change, to the postmodernist the personal is political (and vice versa). Macro-structures, whether research methods, assessment regimes or corporate managerialism in its many forms, stand only as long as individual and collective need or desire sustain them. Discourses shape desire, and can be opened up to new possibilities and practices through new ways of speaking mathematics education into existence, as in Mathematics Education within the Postmodern. Here the deconstructive manoeuvres are educative and seditious, constituting what seems to me to be a very healthy way of being in educational practice and research. While there are many ways in which one could choose to speak to the papers in this volume, I have assembled them under the banners of a postmodern climate of challenge and inquiry, the productive power of discourse, and the de-centred subject. Book Review