RESEARCHING CHANGE IN PROSPECTIVE AND BEGINNING TEACHERS

Abstract

In researching the development of prospective and beginning teachers our focus has been on complex decision-making in the classroom. How is it that new teachers to the profession can act competently and instantaneously, in situations where they literally do not know what to do, without the accumulated wisdom and experience of a practising teacher? As a teacher educator and head of mathematics department in a secondary school our task seems to be to facilitate these teachers to be able to see what is happening in their classrooms in a different way to how they were taught themselves so that they have more choices about how to act. Our take on what ‘change’ is colours how we collect and analyse data so, firstly, what is change to us?