Mathematics teachers: Negotiating personal and discipline identities

The professional practice of teachers is shaped and directed by their sense of identity (Beijaard, Verloop, & Vermunt, 2000). All teachers have some conception of themselves as pedagogues, but they also have identities which relate to the disciplines that they are required to teach. Here we report on a project that explored the nexus of these identities with specialist mathematics teachers in secondary schools and generalist teachers who teach mathematics in primary/middle schools. The preliminary findings presented here suggest that when teaching mathematics, teachers often enact a pedagogy that unconsciously reflects their identities as somewhere on the continuum from mathematician to teacher. It appears that ‘excellence’ as teachers may be associated with teachers viewing themselves as educators first and foremostly, but who have a positive perception of the discipline area, and who are confident in the related Pedagogical Content Knowledge