A re-examination of reflective practice as a viable frame for mathematics teacher education: is it sustainable?

Within our professional practices in mathematics teacher education we have promoted the use of reflective practice as a conceptualisation of the formation of professional knowledge. This paradigm opens up practices in teaching and learning mathematics; from this teachers can establish what is possible, that is how practices might develop and change. This has also offered us a valid approach for our own researches which have interest in the production of knowledge and socio-political concerns. For some time we have had concerns about the sustainability of this paradigm within the competence-based descriptions of training that now pervade much of (particularly, primary) initial teacher education in the UK. It has been suggested that self reflection and examination of professional challenges and possibilities are at odds with a competence based model of training, that ITE students are necessarily preoccupied with the practical concerns of preparation and that a more critical way of working is best placed in teachers’ continuing development courses, for example, at Master’s level.

This raises questions about what, in particular, reflective practice and the development of reflective practitioners can offer mathematics teacher education, both pre-service and in-service. Also where and in what forms it is appropriate and possible for this paradigm to emerge within today’s technicist/rational discourse. We have drawn on teachers’ discussions of their own professional development in mathematics teaching and learning to consider the continuing relevance of reflective practice and the significance of teachers’ sense of agency and governance in mathematics teacher education.