Mediation Matters: Disrupting Deficit Discourse Through Classroom-Based Methods Courses

• In Event: 29.046 - Intersections in Education: Reaching and Teaching Diverse Students

Abstract

There is a growing call to understand how to support teachers to view diverse groups of students, often viewed with deficit perspectives, as capable of participating in rigorous mathematical activity. This paper reports on an analysis of a pre-service mathematics methods course involving a mediated field experience – an experience located in a classroom with students and mediated by tools and the expertise of teacher educators – and its relationship to pre-service teachers’ developing views of mathematics, teaching mathematics, and students’ mathematical capabilities. Dimensions of the design of the course that emerged as supporting their developing views include: an orientation toward students’ thinking; working closely with one student; and the unique roles and expertise of both university- and classroom-based teacher educators.

Author

• Hannah Nieman, University of Washington