This paper reports findings from a study that establishes empirical support for Harel's (Zentralblatt für Didaktik der Math 40:893-907 2008b) inclusion of "mathematical ways of thinking" as a component of teachers' professional knowledge base. Specifically, we examined the role of "quantitative reasoning" (Smith and Thompson,…

Is it possible that a meeting of mathematicians and primary school teachers will be productive? This question became intriguing when one professor of mathematics initiated a professional development course for practicing primary school teachers, which he taught alongside a group of mathematics Ph.D. students. This report scrutinizes the uncommon…

Mathematical tasks and tools, including tasks in the form of digital tools, are key resources in mathematics teaching and in mathematics teacher education. Even so, the "design" of mathematical tasks is perceived in different ways: sometimes seen as something distinct from the teaching and learning process, and sometimes as integral to…

Field placements serve as the traditional "clinical" experience for prospective mathematics teachers to immerse themselves in the mathematical challenges of students. This article reports data from a different type of learning experience, that of a clinical simulation with a standardized individual. We begin with a brief background on…

Mathematical task design has been a central focus of the mathematics education research community over the last few years. In this study, six university teacher educators from six different US institutions formed a community of practice to explore key aspects of task design (planning, implementing, reflecting, and modifying) in the context of…

The current reform movement in mathematics education urges teachers to support students as they make sense of mathematics, while also ensuring that they gain specific mathematical skills and knowledge. The tension between these two expectations gives rise to what we call the dilemma of telling: how to ensure that students come to certain…

The technological revolution that has finally permeated K-12 education has direct implications for modern teacher educators whose "Hippocratic oath" is to best prepare future teachers for twenty-first-century classrooms. The goal of this article is to suggest that the heart of sound technological implementation is to encourage students to use…

In this article, I draw on post-structural and feminist epistemologies to analyse interview data from two prospective teachers on a primary education degree. Specifically I use Foucauldian critical discourse analysis to discuss the competing discourses of the masculine mathematician and the feminine primary school teacher. The initial purpose of…

This paper describes a three-level framework (technical, domain, and generic) which enables some generalisability across mathematics topics for effective teacher-education (TE) task design. It argues that TE tasks which encompass these levels increase preservice and inservice teachers' interest because they transcend the particular mathematical…

Partnership with teachers for professional development has been considered beneficial because of the potential of collaborative work in the teacher's own classroom to be relevant to practice. From this perspective, both teachers and researchers can draw on their own expertise and work as authentic partners. In this study, we address the need for…