Researching Primary Trainees ’ Choice of Examples: Some early analysis of data

This paper reports on the early findings of a doctoral study exploring primary trainee teachers ’ choices of mathematical examples and the relationship between this and their mathematical subject knowledge. Through a combination of interview analyses and lesson plans gathered from the final school placement of one cohort of B.Ed trainees, some approaches appear to be commonly held by trainees about the nature and purpose of examples in the planning and teaching process. This paper presents the research design and some early outcomes from the data with a view to developing a second phase of data collection