Tasks promoting prospective mathematics teachers' reflective skills: Focus on individual differences
Abstrakt
The chapter aims to show how specific tasks developed reflective thinking in future mathematics teachers and to point out individual differences in this development. The theoretical framework consists of reflection, practice-based tasks in teacher education, writing narratives, using videos in teacher education.
The tasks were assigned both in mathematics education courses and in the accompanying teaching practice. They included writing teaching plans and hypothetical teaching plans, reporting on the teaching of others and critical incidents observed in mathematics lessons and tasks based on the analysis of the video of mathematics lessons.
Two case studies of future mathematics teachers illustrate how future teachers learn from the tasks assigned during the two--year master's study and in what way (and why) their learning from the tasks differed. One implication of the chapter is that we should be cautious about making inferences about individuals based on one or two tasks.