“Not Like a Big Gap, Something We Could Handle”: Facilitating Shifts in Paradigm in the Supervision of Mathematics Graduates upon Entry into Mathematics Education

Mathematics is the discipline that a significant majority of most incoming researchers in mathematics education have prior qualifications and experience in. Upon entry into the field of mathematics education research, these newcomers–often students on a postgraduate programme in mathematics education–need a broadened understanding on how to read, converse, write and conduct research in the largely unfamiliar territory of mathematics education. The intervention into the practices of post-graduate teaching and supervision in the field of mathematics education that I describe here aims at fostering this broadened understanding and thus facilitating newcomers’ participation in the practices of the mathematics education research community. Here I outline the theoretical underpinnings of the intervention and exemplify one of its parts (an Activity Set designed to facilitate incoming students’ engagement with the mathematics education research literature). I supplement the discussion of the intervention with comments sampled from student interview and student written evaluation data as well as observations of the activities’ implementation. The main themes touched upon include: learning how to identify appropriate mathematics education literature; reading increasingly more complex writings in mathematics education; coping with the complexity of literate mathematics education discourse; working towards a contextualised understanding of literate mathematics education discourse. I conclude with indicating the directions that the intervention, and its evaluation, is currently taking and a brief discussion of broader implications, theoretical as well as concerning the supervision and teaching of post-graduate students in mathematics education

Mathematics And Mathematics Education Values In Forming Someone’s Character

The success of someone’ life is not only determined by intellectual aspect, but also other aspects, such as character, emotional, and social aspects. Those three aspects can’t be separated from moral values. Moral values are concepts of basic behavior and attitude which determine who we are, how we live, and how we behave to others. Mathematics and mathematics education characteristic can become a means to make them become true. From this view, it is very interesting to know further between mathematics and mathematics education values with the problems of life, that is character. Keywords: Mathematics value, mathematics education value, character

Social Justice in and through Mathematics Education: For Improving the Quality of Mathematics Teaching and Internalising Students’ Character Building

Aside from being one of the systematically arranged disciplines, mathematics is also a social construction that views humans as active subjects in building knowledge through interaction with the surrounding environment.　Therefore, in addition to being a medium to enhance students’ understanding of mathematical concepts, mathematics education should also apply the principles of social activity while linking mathematical concepts to social issues.　This research is intended to reform mathematics learning so that it does not merely focus on students’ understanding of mathematical concepts, but also improve their quality through the application of ‘social justice in mathematics education’, while at the same time internalising issues related to social justice through the application of ‘social justice through mathematics education’ concepts.　This study used action research as the research methodology considering its actionbased themes and characteristics, where the teacher performed and simultaneously reflected learning activities.　The findings obtained from this study are: (i) several challenges related to the application of ‘social justice in and through mathematics education’ in mathematics learning area, among others, include the difficulty of changing the teacher’s mindset on how to teach mathematics to students equitably (socially) and how to foster teacher sensitivity in designing mathematics learning that integrated justice issues into mathematics learning; (ii) the implementation of the principle of ‘social justice in and through mathematics education’ in order to improve the quality of mathematics learning is felt to be ineffective because of the teacher’s ability to design and implement mathematics learning involving ‘social justice in mathematics learning’ and ‘social justice through mathematics learning’ remains adequate; and (iii) the application of ‘social justice in and through mathematics education’ has a significant effect on student involvement in mathematics learning.　It is characterized by more active students in learning and more enthusiastic students in learning activities, because the material that is discussed very closely with students’ daily experiences.　 Furthermore, the findings of this study are expected to contribute to the reform of mathematics education, especially those related to productive mathematics learning, the planting of effective mathematical concepts in students, equitable mathematics learning, and simultaneously internalizing social justice issues through the application of concepts, such as building students’ character.　By using the elements in the planning and reflection of lessons, teachers are able to develop a comprehensive guide for improving the quality of their lessons and at the same time internalize students’ character building by using social justice issues

A Relationship Between Problem Solving Ability and Students' Mathematical Thinking

This research have a purpose to know is there an influence of problem solving abilty to students mathematical thinking, and to know how strong problem solving ability affect students mathematical thinking. This research used descriptive quantitative method, which a population is all of students that taking discrete mathematics courses both in department of Information Systems and department of mathematics education. Based on the results of data analysis showed that there are an influence of problem solving ability to students mathematical thinking either at department of mathematics education or at department of information systems. In this study, it was found that the influence of problem solving ability to students mathematical thinking which take place at mathematics education department is stonger than at information system department. This is because, at mathematics education department, problem-solving activities more often performed in courses than at department of information system. Almost 75% of existing courses in department of mathematics education involve problem solving to the objective of courses, meanwhile, in the department of information systems, there are only 10% of these courses. As a result, mathematics education department student's are better trained in problem solving than information system department students. So, to improve students' mathematical thinking, its would be better, at fisrtly enhance the problem solving ability

A review of research trends in mathematics teacher education

This article presents a literature review in the field of mathematics teacher education research. The review focuses on identifying the main research trends in this field, that is, the main research topics that the mathematics teacher educators’ community is currently addressing, and the main theoretical concepts used to study these topics. One of the contributions of the review is that it identifies new research trends that have not been previously reported. Some of these trends are online mathematics teacher education, and the design and role of tasks in mathematics teacher education

Mathematics Education: For Whom?

To rethink about our role as researchers of the mathematics education pro- cess could be a way to think about the relation between for what and why mathematics education exists. Some thoughts, that grew from my inner dia- logues as a researcher, teacher, student, and mother that I am, were devel- oped within practices inside multiple systems in which I was engaged, bring- ing some questions that became a paper from the necessity for sharing them in the Discussion Group 3 of the ICME environmen

Investigating mathematics teacher efficacy beliefs in primary initial teacher education

This paper will discuss the mathematics teacher efficacy beliefs (MTEB) of primary initial teacher education (ITE) students. We are interested in studying how ITE students’ MTEBs are influenced (or not) by mathematics education modules undertaken as part of an undergraduate Bachelor of Education (BEd) programme. We will detail how approximations of practice (Grossman, Compton, Igra, Ronfeldt, Shahan, & Williamson, 2009) have been incorporated into mathematics education modules to create opportunities for the development of MTEBs and will report on focus group interviews which explored MTEBs of ITE student

Engaging with issues of emotionality in mathematics teacher education for social justice

This article focuses on the relationship between social justice, emotionality and mathematics teaching in the context of the education of prospective teachers of mathematics. A relational approach to social justice calls for giving attention to enacting socially-just relationships in mathematics classrooms. Emotionality and social justice in teaching mathematics variously intersect, interrelate or interweave. An intervention, usng creative action methods, with a cohort of prospective teachers addressing these issues is described to illustrate the connection between emotionality and social justice in the context of mathematics teacher education. Creative action methods involve a variety of dramatic, interactive and experiential tools that can promote personal and group engagement and embodied reflection. The intervention aimed to engage the prospective teachers with some key issues for social justice in mathematics education through dialogue about the emotionality of teaching and learning mathematics. Some of the possibilities and limits of using such methods are considered