Transforming Pre-service Teachers' Understandings of Mathematics: Dialogue, Bakhtin and open-mindedness

Abstract

Transcripts from an undergraduate elementary mathematics methods class provide a story of students' struggle and transformation. As the teacher leads classroom discourse, students' thinking shifts from using remembering in mathematics to using logic and reasoning. The teacher reflects on the exchange and finds in it examples of major issues in mathematics education in the USA. Re-analysis of the exchange using Bakhtin's (1981) concept of 'appropriation' reveals the teacher's initial judgment of student resistance and lack of open-mindedness (Dewey, 1933) could be reinterpreted as a struggle for meaning. Reciprocal teacher and student growth results. Recommendations are made for faculty to reanalyse negative student responses, value and encourage them as necessary to learning.