Pre-service teacher professional learning communities, inquiry into social and cognitive dimensions of learners’ mathematical errors

Abstract

This study investigated pre-service teacher professional learning communities (PST-PLCs) as spaces to develop critical inquiry into practice. The purpose of pre-service teacher education programmes is to function as a support for pre-service teachers’ professional learning. Professional learning communities are spaces in which new ways of thinking about practice can flourish and traditional practice be contested. Pre-service teachers in this study were encouraged to explore learners’ mathematical errors from two entry points. The first entry point, defined as the social dimension, focused on inquiry into learners’ mathematical learning experiences. The second entry point, defined as the cognitive dimension, prioritises learners’ reasoning about their errors. The PST-PLCs were encouraged to inquire into these dimensions and the connections between these dimensions. This approach to inquiry into learners’ mathematical errors takes on a non-deficit perspective of learners’ mathematical errors and learners’ mathematical learning experiences in class and beyond school. The theoretical work of the thesis drew on the following: Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (1999) construct of ‘inquiry as stance’ which distinguishes between three different conceptions of teacher learning to locate sources of teacher knowledge; Zenios’s (2011) construct of epistemic move in relation to deepening inquiry through knowledge and constructs within professional learning community theory and Wenger’s (1998) concept of shared accountability in community of practice. A multiple-case study was conducted, consisting of five pre-service teacher professional learning communities. The inquiry within these groups was videotaped over the course of an academic year; this represented the main data source. Additional data included pre-service teachers’ mathematical learning experiences as school learners, collected through individual interviews and group interviews at the end of the academic year, which focused on the pre-service teachers’ reflections on their inquiry in the professional learning communities. Findings from the research revealed that the stance towards the inquiry into a particular dimension of learning influenced the emergence of other dimensions and the potential for learning about the connections between the dimensions. Data analysis also highlighted how the stances differed in epistemic moves and their interactions that were generated as enablers of critical inquiry in relation to deepening the inquiry through knowledge. A significant contribution to knowledge that emerged from the findings is the importance of pre-service teachers’ reflecting on their own learning experiences on a cognitive and social dimension of learning for making connections between these dimensions of learners’ learning. The research makes a contribution to knowledge on collaborative inquiry practices and shared accountability towards these inquiry practices through introducing the concept of an inhibitor into the analysis of the PST-PLC inquiry. The findings of the research provide insight into learning experiences for pre-service teachers in supporting them with developing collaborative inquiry practices for a critical stance on their teaching practice. The study suggests that PST-PLCs are a space for inquiry into new teaching practices and for developing a collaborative critical inquiry stance on practice.