Teachers Learning Together: Pedagogical Reasoning in Mathematics Teachers’ Collaborative Conversations

Abstract

In the United States, teaching is an isolated profession. At the same time, ambitious forms of teaching have been shown to benefit from teachers’ collaborations. What is it about collegial conversations that supports teachers’ ongoing professional learning? In this paper, I synthesize findings from prior studies on mathematics teachers’ collaborative conversations, focus my analysis on collective pedagogical reasoning. I examine four facets of collegial conversations that support refinements in this reasoning. These facets are: interactional organization, engagement of individual teachers in a group, epistemic stance on mathematics teaching, and locally negotiated standards of representational adequacy. Together, these aspects of teacher talk differently organize opportunities for