Practice-Based Initial Teacher Education: Developing Inquiring Professionals

Abstract

Practice-based initial teacher education reforms are typically organised around a set of core teaching practices, a set of normative principles to guide teachers’ judgement, and the knowledge needed to teach mathematics. Developing more than understandings, practices, and visions, practice based pedagogies also need to support prospective teachers’ emergent dispositions for teaching. Based on the premise that an inquiry stance is a key attribute of adaptive expertise and teacher professionalism this paper examines the function and value of inquiry within practice-based learning. Findings from the Learning the Work of Ambitious Mathematics Teaching project are used to illustrate how opportunities to engage in critical and collaborative reflective practices can contribute to prospective teachers’ development of an inquiry oriented stance. Exemplars of prospective teachers’ inquiry processes in action—both within rehearsal activities and a classroom inquiry—highlight the potential value of practice-based opportunities to learn the work of teaching.