Quality learning for preservice teachers of mathematics: problems and processes from a Poststructuralist perspective

In this paper I consider what quality learning for preservice teachers might look like, given the poststructuralist notion of the discursive construction of knowledge. First, I attempt to tease out the notion pf what it means 'to learn' to teach mathematics, when what one knows has both epistemological and ontological dimensions, influencing one's professional identity and practice. Second, I contemplate the effects the pedagogies of school and university mathematics have (had) on preservice teachers' ability to teach in ways that get beyond readings of individual 'deficit' and disadvantage. I then contemplate a small window of opportunity for teacher education; it may be possible to engage preservice teachers in teaching/learning interactions that celebrate uncertainty regarding identities 'set in stone' and teaching as an unalienable good. This climate of inquiry would be, to some extent at least, constitutive of the teachers of the future, and may encourage them to think differently about what they do in the name of quality teaching and equity