CAREER: Examining the Mutual Construction of Learning and Teaching in University Mathematics Classrooms
Undergraduate mathematics majors intending to be teachers have difficulty in engaging in mathematical practices, even with familiar mathematical content. They are not able to engage in mathematical practices that are key to fostering these same practices in their students. They report insufficient opportunities to engage in and learn these practices in their undergraduate mathematics courses. Similarly graduate students with undergraduate mathematics majors or their equivalent intending to be teachers have difficulties in engaging in and articulating mathematical practices. Design experiments to engage them in these practices overestimated their prior experiences with mathematical practices, and thus had to spend a great deal of time in allowing students to engage in practices before they had sufficient experience to abstract from and across these practices to generate larger ideas about the practices.
