Mathematics teacher educators require a strong grasp of three distinct fields of study, namely mathematics, pedagogy, and crucially, what we are now referring to as Developmental Mathematics for Teaching (DMT). The challenge of describing a discipline that is an amalgam of not just two, but, we argue, of three distinct fields of study is on-going. We as post-secondary educators tend to initially come to mathematics teacher education from one of these primary fields, and yet to effectively work with teachers, must become at least somewhat fluent in all three. This talk will provide examples which illustrate both the complexity, and the crucial nature of such teacher (and teacher educator) knowledge in supporting student learning. The examples are drawn from classroom observations, professional learning group discussions, lesson plans, demonstration teaching episodes, and formal survey data drawn from teachers and teacher candidates over a 20+ year period. They showcase the importance of teacher knowledge of DMT in particular, and the effects on student learning when such teacher knowledge is less robust. A whimsical model showing the intersection of these three fields of study, contributing to the Domain of Mathematics Education (the DoME), will be offered to illustrate the codependency of all three areas, in which no single field is dominant over the others, but all are crucial.

Bio

Ann began her post-secondary teaching career by teaching a course called Topics in Mathematics for elementary teachers, housed within a Department of Mathematics. This inadvertently led to a career-long endeavor to unpack and fulsomely describe and support mathematical learning for all teachers, both elementary and secondary, in a way which supports student learning. A past winner of the Margaret Sinclair Award, Ann has taught mathematics at the high school, college, and university levels, designed and taught the Kindermath program for young children. More recently, she has spent the last several decades studying teacher mathematics learning, and teaching elementary and secondary pre-service teachers. She is the creator of the (DoMEDomain of Mathematics Education) model of teacher mathematics learning.