for the learning of mathematics

an international journal of mathematics education

Brent Davis ,  Moshe Renert - Vol. 29 Num. 3 (2009)
 Mathematics-for-teaching as shared dynamic participation

37-43
 ABSTRACT:

We report on a two-year 'concept study' in which a cohort of middle school teachers collectively deconstructed and reconstructed the concept of multiplication. Defining concept study as a collaborative structure through which mathematics educators identify, interpret, interrogate, invent, and elaborate images, metaphors, analogies, examples, exemplars, exercises, gestures, and applications that are invoked in efforts to support the development of students' mathematical understandings, we suggest that teachers' disciplinary knowledge might be more productively construed in terms of a participatory attitude toward mathematics than as an explicit body of knowledge.