Dispositions in the field: viewing mathematics teacher education through the lens of Bourdieu’s social field theory

Abstract

Mathematics teacher educators are confronted with numerous challenges and complexities as they work to inspire prospective teachers to embrace inquiry-based pedagogies. The research study described in this paper asks what a teacher educator and faculty advisor can learn from prospective secondary mathematics teachers as they construct (and are constructed by) official pedagogical discourses embedded in mathematics classrooms. Drawing on the theoretical constructs of Bourdieu, I present several pervasive discourses, or dispositions, as storied by prospective mathematics teachers. These discourses highlight prospective teachers' negotiations of conflicting habitus-field fits during their teacher education field experience. The reflections put forth in this paper offer insights into the roles of mathematics teacher educators and teacher education programs in general.

Supporting mathematical reasoning through reading and writing in mathematics : making the implicit explicit

“…This was also found in Meaney, et al's (2009) study as the students' favorite kind of writing. This is consistent with many of the exercises provided in the mathematics textbook (Boesen et al, 2014;Ebbelind & Segerby, 2015;Herbel-Eisenmann, 2007;Segerby, 2014;Segerby, submitted) and tests (Nolan, 2012). The exercises are a strong part of the context of culture; what mathematics is and should be according to students as well as the teachers.…”

“…Some suggest that instead of being the transmitter of knowledge, the teacher should support and promote mathematics in a variety of settings, such as whole-class settings, small group work and investigative work (Lampert & Cobb, 2003;Jaworski & Potari, 2009). However, although teacher education programmes introduce student-focused and inquiry-based pedagogies, traditional teacher-directed learning using traditional textbooks is still widely used in the classroom (Lambert & Cobb, 2003;Nolan, 2012). Therefore, despite several efforts, the mathematics textbook in mathematics education is still extensively used (Boesen et al, 2014;Haggarty & Pepin, 2002;Remillard, 2005;Thomson & Fleming, 2004).…”

“…According to Remillard (2005), this can relate to teachers' constructing their own unique version of the curriculum that relates to their understandings, needs and goals. Another aspect that might influence the culture is testing, which is a strong and engrained tradition in mathematics education worldwide; it indicates that learning and knowing mathematics involves the strict performance of knowledge in a given time frame performed in complete isolation after working with a specific topic or with several topics in the mathematics curriculum (Nolan, 2012). Testing mainly concerns the advance of procedures and rules with the purpose of showing how students can become more autonomous and work on their own.…”

Social theory in mathematics education: Guest editorial

“…Some of Bourdieu's work also addresses educational contexts directly (e.g., Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), though his theoretical tools, including those of social and cultural capital, habitus and field, are more generally applicable to interrogate and understand relationships between individuals and social structures (Bourdieu, 1990). His impact on educational research has been most extensive in higher education research, though, within mathematics education, some of his theoretical constructs have been used to explore such issues as conflicts experienced in teacher education (Nolan, 2012), the practices and positioning of new teachers (Noyes, 2004) and the mechanisms by which children are positioned socially during the transfer from primary to secondary school (Noyes, 2003).…”

Troubling “understanding mathematics in-depth”: Its role in the identity work of student-teachers in England

“…In this way, we are responding to an invitation in Nolan's (2011) reflective study exploring why prospective mathematics teachers do not take on inquiry-based approaches in the classroom. Nolan, drawing on concepts from Bourdieu, speculates that teaching for understanding and criticality may have become an orthodoxy within mathematics teacher education, and ends by suggesting: "Perhaps a critical next step in a reflective study of this nature would be to ask the question of how my practice as a teacher educator and faculty advisor must be (cross)examined as its own site of (re)production" (p. 214).…”