Practice of planning in mathematics teaching : meaning and relations

Understanding the complexity of teaching also means understanding issues outside classrooms, including planning in mathematics. Although planning is part of a mathematics teacher’s everyday life, there is no shared understanding of it, and little is known about how teachers’ planning is related to other practices. In response, to explore what planning means to mathematics teachers and planning’s relations to other practices, interviews were conducted with teachers and their contents analyzed in several steps to generate a story of each teacher’s experiences with planning. For one teacher, Fia, planning meant decisions and considerations about mathematical content and teaching situations, as well as navigating the decisions and opinions of other actors. Fia’s planning is related to practices of management, mathematics teaching, and mathematics teachers, all of which influenced her planning and how her students encountered mathematics in the classroom