Desires for mathematics teachers and their knowledge : Practicum, practices, and policy in mathematics teacher education

Sammanfattning: This dissertation is driven by questions about images of desired teachers, privileged teacher knowledge, and access to knowledge in teacher education. My position is that images of particular teachers restrict access to teacher education, while visible knowledge increases epistemic access. A particular focus is practicum, where images of desired teachers and privileged knowledge are negotiated between the three arenas of school, university, and policy. Four papers are included, and each paper is a separate study.Two studies engage images of desired teachers. The first study engages lesson observation protocols from the practicum part of teacher education in six countries. The result is four different images of desired teachers: the knowledgeable, the knowledge-transforming, the efficient, and the constantly-improving teacher. The second study is an analysis of Swedish policy reports prepared for political decisions on teacher education, at a national level. The analysis targets mathematics knowledge and mathematics teachers as constructed in the reform. The images of desired teachers constructed in policy were the born, the interested, the knowledgeable, and the skilful teacher. The privileged mathematical knowledge was skills and facts. The next two studies engage privileged knowledge. The third study uses practicum tasks from two programmes in the same institution, and engages an analysis of a third space, where the practice-based context and conceptual objects can integrate. The result is that the visibility of conceptual knowledge, and particularly mathematical knowledge, decreased from the former to the more recent programme, and the third space for theory and practice to integrate, diminished. The fourth study is an analysis of mentor conversations in the school arena, focusing on de-ritualising prompts in teaching. Mentors were found to privilege learners’ agentive participation in learning mathematics and hence the production of narratives and flexible routines.In the studies, the images of desired teachers and privileged knowledge are compared across arenas. The image of the knowledgeable teacher and the image of the efficient teacher who successfully obtains goals, permeated all arenas. There were four differences: one, the images of born, interested, and skilful teachers were visible only in the policy arena; two, the privileged mathematical knowledge in policy was skills and facts to be memorised, while for mentors in schools, learner participation in mathematics discourse was privileged; three, the third space was not generated in practicum tasks, whereas the complex joint labour in teaching and learning mathematics was foregrounded by mentors; four, the image of the constantly improving teacher was found only in the practicum instruments of teacher education.Although the image of a knowledgeable teacher was visible across the arenas, a disagreement on privileged knowledge was found. Student teachers are asked to self-improve, but are at the same time made responsible for recognising invisible knowledge. I claim that more can be done in mathematics teacher education to promote visible knowledge in practicum, and thereby increase epistemic access. I also claim that the image of the born teacher is based on normalisations which are often irrelevant for appraising teachers.