Prospective secondary mathematics teachers in Australia are typically taught by mathematics educators and mathematicians who work in different faculties and seldom collaborate--a situation that can lead to conflicting views about how to teach mathematics. This paper reports on findings from semi-structured interviews with three mathematics teacher…

Out-of-field teaching refers to the practice of assigning teachers to teach subjects that do not match their training or education. This paper reports on a study evaluating the impact of a national professional development programme for out-of-field teachers of post-primary school mathematics in Ireland -- the Professional Diploma in Mathematics…

In this article, Merrilyn Goos looks at beliefs about the nature of mathematics and perceptions of mathematics teachers in examining "why teachers matter." It is difficult for researchers to specify exactly how different types of teaching and teacher qualities affect student achievement because this would require untangling the…

"Out-of-field teaching" is an international phenomenon that seems particularly prevalent in mathematics. Our study is evaluating the impact of a national professional learning program for out-of-field secondary mathematics teachers in Ireland. Using the Productive Pedagogies framework, we compared the pedagogical practices of three pairs…

This article examines possibilities for using Valsiner's zone theory to understand identity formation of mathematics teachers and mathematics teacher educators. We situate our analysis within a sociological frame for identity research, in which identity is interpreted as an action rather than an acquisition. Valsiner's theoretical approach is…

Secondary mathematics pre-service teachers often have different experiences of mathematics and its teaching and learning during their initial teacher education. This paper documents the beliefs about mathematics, its teaching, and its learning, of mathematicians and mathematics educators who teach secondary mathematics pre-service teachers. The…

The knowledge that mathematics teacher educators need has attracted limited but increasing attention in recent years. The papers in this special issue build on emerging themes from that work and raise additional questions that contribute towards a future research agenda in the field. Several of the articles develop conceptualisations of teacher…

Students' post-school options are limited if they have not completed mathematics subjects involving the study of calculus. This paper employs a sociocultural approach to identify institutional practices that might promote sustained engagement with these subjects among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Drawing on interviews with mathematics…

In many countries, pre-service teacher education programs are structured so that mathematics content is taught in the university's mathematics department and mathematics pedagogy in the education department. Such program structures make it difficult to authentically interweave content with pedagogy in ways that acknowledge the roles of both…

Education research journals regularly report on small-scale studies that have been successful in changing mathematics teachers' classroom practices. But it is rare to find professional development programs for teachers of mathematics that have been scaled up and sustained over time. This article reports on a research-informed, large-scale…

At the special conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT), the author was asked to speak about the challenges and opportunities in teaching mathematics as a stimulus for discussion of AAMT's "future directions". With an open invitation to be a little provocative, the author…

Collaboration between mathematicians and mathematics educators may provide a means of improving the quality of pre-service teacher education for prospective teachers of mathematics. Some preliminary findings of a project that investigates this type of interdisciplinary collaboration, both within and across institutions, are reported on in this…

This article discusses key issues surrounding the nature and development of professional knowledge for effective teaching of mathematics, especially at the secondary school level. In the education research community it is generally accepted that teachers need more than knowledge of the content they will teach; an additional construct, pedagogical…

This article presents preliminary results from a survey commissioned for ICME 13 (2016) focusing on "Teachers Working and Learning Through Collaboration". It takes as a starting point a previous survey, commissioned for ICME 10 in 2004 that focused on Mathematics Teacher Education. The current survey focuses centrally on teachers…

In this review essay we critically examine issues raised by authors whose work is published in the two Special Issues of "JMTE" (Part 1, 13.5 and Part 2, 13.6) on Mathematics Teacher and Mathematics Teacher Educator Change--Insight through Theoretical Perspectives. While the authors have drawn on a wide range of theories and approaches, we have…