TEACHING BECOMES YOU: THE CHALLENGES OF PLACING IDENTITY FORMATION AT THE CENTRE OF MATHEMATICS PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION

In spite of introducing new forms of instruction and assessment during teacher education programs, traditional textbook and teacher-directed approaches prevail in mathematics classrooms. Such approaches still dominate because of a number of socio-cultural issues relating to pedagogical identity, classroom culture, the perceived nature of mathematics, and personal epistemological beliefs. Because new and innovative forms of instruction and assessment look very different from current classroom practices, attempts to implement them highlight several obstacles to change in the teaching of mathematics. In this paper, I briefly discuss three such obstacles that emerged and dominated the discourse during a research process with secondary mathematics pre-service teachers