Artistry in Teaching: Writing Children’s Mathematics Literature Books as Teacher Education

Abstract

Helping pre-service teachers to feel competent and courageous about the mathematics they will find themselves teaching as elementary school teachers is a critical component of any math methods course. This paper addresses this aim by highlighting a process that involves pre-service teachers in creating original mathematics literature books. This process assumes a social practice theory of learning based on a relationship among one's own thinking, the activity, and the thinking of other interested persons (Rogers, 1974). My stance is that creating such books offers ways for pre-service teachers to gain new mathematical understandings, connect the math they will be teaching to other life situations, identify pedagogical practices that support student thinking, integrate artistry into the teaching of content, and understand more deeply the multidisciplinary nature of mathematics.