Mathematics Teacher Educators distributed expertise: Transition from secondary school mathematics teaching to preservice teacher education
4 - 25 March 2024
Biography
Dr Chorney is an associate professor at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Greater Vancouver, BC, Canada. He has been at SFU for 10 years. Before his tenure with SFU, he was a high school teacher for 20+ years. Currently, Dr Chorney's research aspires to enable mathematics education to become more humanistic, where the diverse personal experiences of students and teachers are valued as a foundation for meaningful and inclusive learning. His research includes mathematising, whereby he explores how mathematical thinking emerges from students’ personal values as they engage with social issues, such as climate change or political districting. He is also interested in how digital technology can enhance mathematical learning and how such tools can be integrated into elementary and secondary classrooms.
"Related to the project I will be engaging with Tracy Helliwell at the University of Bristol, my research engages with the area of mathematics teacher educator expertise. One of the most important practices and understandings of teacher education for me is to convey that students need to find their own voice as a teacher. I value a diversity of styles, attitudes, and approaches in teaching. I see my role, not to model teaching, but to support and encourage each person to explore their own questions to discover how mathematics, as they see it, can be taught. While I do model certain practices for my students, I always provide a space, both during and after the activity, in which I encourage questions and critiques of the method being presented. This added critical layer is essential in teacher education. Students are encouraged to consider what alternative ways exist to approach a topic. Questions we explore might include: What seems helpful? Who might this activity not work for? What are alternative ways of thinking about this? When we have genuine dialogue, we create meanings that we are invested in and connected with."
Research Summary
"I will be coming to the University of Bristol for three weeks in March of 2024 and work with Tracy Helliwell to research the development of mathematics teacher educator (MTE) expertise. Tracy and I have been collaborating for a few years now; we connected four years ago at an international conference noting that each of us had similar backgrounds (both of us were mathematics teachers in high school for many years), and we were both interested in the skills and knowledge MTEs needed for teaching preservice mathematics teachers.
Over the past few years, Tracy and I have led three working groups at an international conference in the area of MTE expertise. In this working group, we engaged in conversation with the international community and found that there was an interest in the transition from teaching elementary or secondary mathematics to becoming an MTE. It was shared that in many countries, almost always, MTEs were practicing mathematics teachers before they became MTEs but yet that there was a dearth of research in the area of this transition. Tracy and I feel competent in addressing this gap since we were mathematics teachers, we are familiar with much of the current literature on MTE expertise and we are in ongoing conversation with the international community in this area.
MTE expertise is a relatively new field (approximately five years old) and so there is potential of articulating some new expressions of the construct of expertise for the literature. Our aim is to answer the following questions: how do the experiences of teaching high school inform the knowledge and practice of an MTE?; what changes occur in the transition?; how is the transition made?; how does context play a part in transitioning to an MTE?; what theoretical framework is helpful in understanding how MTEs learn and develop?"
Lectures and seminars
Please contact Dr Chorney's host, Dr Tracy Helliwell, for further information.
