Who Is a Mathematics Teacher and What Does a Mathematics Teacher Do?

Abstract

<p>Preservice middle school mathematics teachers’ (PMTs) beliefs about a mathematics teacher and mathematics teaching were investigated through the metaphors they generated. Third- and fourth-year PMTs (<em>N</em> = 249) at four universities in Türkiye participated in two anonymous metaphor tasks for a mathematics teacher and mathematics teaching. PMTs’ metaphors were first analysed by the framework developed for and used in previous studies exploring teachers’ metaphors (Löfström et al., <a title="Löfström E., Poom-Valickis K., & Hannula M. S. (2011). Categorisation of teacher metaphors [Unpublished manual for the NorBa Project]. University of Helsinki & Tallinn University." href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10763-023-10378-7#ref-CR32">2011</a>) with further elaborations. PMTs’ metaphors for a mathematics teacher and mathematics teaching were categorised and compared. Then, deeper analyses of hybrid, self-referential, and contextual metaphors were conducted. Findings revealed that PMTs mostly used didactical expert and self-referential metaphors for the mathematics teacher and hybrid and self-referential metaphors for mathematics teaching. PMTs’ beliefs about mathematics teaching seemed to be more multifaceted than their beliefs about a mathematics teacher. The deeper analyses showed that PMTs associated both the teacher and teaching with positive and/or negative connotations in their self-referential and contextual metaphors. Documenting these beliefs through metaphors allowed us to explore and understand the nature of PMTs’ beliefs and showed that metaphor tasks could be useful for detecting beliefs.<br></p>