THE PERCEPTIONS OF MATHEMATICS AND THE MATURE AGE SECOND-CAREER TEACHER Matthew. B. Etherington Trinity Western University, Canada Matthew.Etherington @ Abstract This report explores the image of mathematics as understood from the perspective of three mature age second career pre-service teachers. Three one hour interviews were conducted at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (U/T) with three second career graduate pre-service teachers over the course of one academic semester. Their perceptions of mathematics suggest that second career teachers have real-world images of mathematics contingent on their work-life experience. This could suggest that the extended career and lived experiences of second career teachers may well help lead the way to changing the old logical humanist image of mathematical practice and understanding to a social constructivist philosophical position of mathematical truths ultimately justified on the basis of lived experience and dialogue. The results of this small scale report suggests that teacher education programs and school classrooms could capitalize on the lived work-life of second career teachers to make mathematics exciting, communicative, integrated, relational and lived. Key Words: mathematics, social constructivism, second career teachers, lived experience, teacher education, NCTM Introduction and problem statement When most people hear the to think of a certain time at word, “mathematics” they are likely school when they were forced to learn things that had little relevancy to their personal lives. We have the image of the dull student filling the mathematics work book with tedious and repetitive exercises, algorithms which require no imagination at all (Slade, 2001).Others are likely to think of mathematics as a pure intellectual pursuit, ice-cold lemmas, theorems, propositions or a means to an end (Bahls, 2009). However we perceive mathematics, most of us grew up in classrooms where we were taught mathematical skills to practice, memorize and rationalize. Consequently, the popular image of mathematics is that it is difficult, cold, abstract and ultra-rational (Ernest,
THE PERCEPTIONS OF MATHEMATICS AND THE MATURE AGE SECOND-CAREER TEACHER Matthew. B. Etherington Trinity Western University, Canada Matthew.Etherington @ Abstract This report explores the image of mathematics as understood from the perspective of three mature age second career pre-service teachers. Three one hour interviews were conducted at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (U/T) with three second career graduate pre-service teachers over the course of one academic semester. Their perceptions of mathematics suggest that second career teachers have real-world images of mathematics contingent on their work-life experience. This could suggest that the extended career and lived experiences of second career teachers may well help lead the way to changing the old logical humanist image of mathematical practice and understanding to a social constructivist philosophical position of mathematical truths ultimately justified on the basis of lived experience and dialogue. The results of this small scale report suggests that teacher education programs and school classrooms could capitalize on the lived work-life of second career teachers to make mathematics exciting, communicative, integrated, relational and lived. Key Words: mathematics, social constructivism, second career teachers, lived experience, teacher education, NCTM Introduction and problem statement When most people hear the word, “mathematics” they are likely to think of a certain time at school when they were forced to learn things that had little relevancy to their personal lives. We have the image of the dull student filling the mathematics work book with tedious and repetitive exercises, algorithms which require no imagination at all (Slade, 2001).Others are likely to think of mathematics as a pure intellectual pursuit, ice-cold lemmas, theorems, propositions or a means to an end (Bahls, 2009). However we perceive mathematics, most of us grew up in classrooms where we were taught mathematical skills to practice, memorize and rationalize. Consequently, the popular image of mathematics is that it is difficult, cold, abstract and ultra-rational (Ernest,
Etherington%20%20-%20Second%20CareerTteachers%20and%20Mathematics.docx