Thesis advisor: Lillie R. Albert / In mathematics education, there is an imperative for more just and equitable experiences in mathematics spaces, as well as ongoing efforts to move classroom instruction toward mathematical inquiry. While Mathematics Teacher Educators (MTEs) are expected to support multiple initiatives in mathematics education, they are particularly responsible for the professional learning of teachers and teacher candidates. MTEs must therefore prepare and support the professional learning of teachers to achieve twin goals. This study was designed to understand how MTEs envision their roles in supporting development of teachers across MTEs’ many professional functions in their work toward the twin goals of equity and inquiry. The findings suggest that identifying the forms mathematical knowledge takes is important for mathematical inquiry and that interrogating these forms can be used to counter pervasive social myths about who can do mathematics. Further, MTEs articulated three interrelated values for application of mathematics inquiry teaching for justice and equity: creating space, supporting sense-making, and naming how power and privilege have operated and continue to operate in mathematics spaces. Finally, MTEs described how mathematics inquiry practices are a mode for understanding the world and can be used to promote equity by uncovering biases and assumptions. These findings suggest a promising avenue for leveraging mathematical inquiry to increase equitable outcomes in mathematics spaces. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:24:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-04-16Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:32:02Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 barbosa_ep_me_rcla.pdf: 459189 bytes, checksum: af33037be8e3b7ad0baa3c4603a39a36 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Este trabalho tem por objetivo identificar de que modo as ações educacionais públicas podem estar afetando a vida profissional dos professores, a partir do discurso deles mesmos. Para tanto, mostramos que este estudo é relevante para a educação matemática pois evidencia uma carência na literatura científica sobre a influência de Políticas Educacionais na vida profissional do professor de Matemática, na voz deles mesmos. Num outro momento fazemos um paralelo entre as mudanças ocorridas no Reino Unido, no governo de Margareth Thatcher, e o brasileiro, principalmente na décade de 90, particularmente em relação ao sistema educacional. No segundo capítulo fazemos uma análise da entrevista que efetuamos com um professor de Ensino Fundamental, com o objetivo acima em mente. E por fim, fazemos conclusões de modo a dialogar com nosso objetivo inicial e assim oferecer, talvez, subsídios aos formuladores/implementadores de políticas educacionais e formadores de professores de Matemática. / This aimed at identifying the ways in which public educational actions (policies) can be affecting the professional life of teachers of mathematics, By examining their own speeches. We show that this is a relevant study for the field of Mathematics Education (by eliciting a void on literature related to this subject). We then present, for the sake of better positioning the current situation in Brazilian school systems, a reading of the similitude between what has happened in the UK (Thatcher and post-Thatcher era) and in Brazil (beginning from Fernando Collor s government), in terms of an increased control of school systems, opposed to a consistent effort to remove government from the productive system. In Chapter 2 we analyse an interview made with a teacher who works on grades 5 to 8 and, finally, on Chapter 3 we offer conclusions and some possible suggestions for educational policymakers and for mathematics teacher educators.

Orientador: Romulo Campos Lins / Banca: Carlos Roberto Vianna / Banca: Rosana Giaretta Sguerra Miskulin / Resumo: Este trabalho tem por objetivo identificar de que modo as ações educacionais públicas podem estar afetando a vida profissional dos professores, a partir do discurso deles mesmos. Para tanto, mostramos que este estudo é relevante para a educação matemática pois evidencia uma carência na literatura científica sobre a influência de Políticas Educacionais na vida profissional do professor de Matemática, na voz deles mesmos. Num outro momento fazemos um paralelo entre as mudanças ocorridas no Reino Unido, no governo de Margareth Thatcher, e o brasileiro, principalmente na décade de 90, particularmente em relação ao sistema educacional. No segundo capítulo fazemos uma análise da entrevista que efetuamos com um professor de Ensino Fundamental, com o objetivo acima em mente. E por fim, fazemos conclusões de modo a dialogar com nosso objetivo inicial e assim oferecer, talvez, subsídios aos formuladores/implementadores de políticas educacionais e formadores de professores de Matemática. / Abstract: This aimed at identifying the ways in which public educational actions (policies) can be affecting the professional life of teachers of mathematics, By examining their own speeches. We show that this is a relevant study for the field of Mathematics Education (by eliciting a void on literature related to this subject). We then present, for the sake of better positioning the current situation in Brazilian school systems, a reading of the similitude between what has happened in the UK (Thatcher and post-Thatcher era) and in Brazil (beginning from Fernando Collor’s government), in terms of an increased control of school systems, opposed to a consistent effort to remove government from the productive system. In Chapter 2 we analyse an interview made with a teacher who works on grades 5 to 8 and, finally, on Chapter 3 we offer conclusions and some possible suggestions for educational policymakers and for mathematics teacher educators. / Mestre

This is a qualitative research that draws on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis methodology to analyze the discourse practices of the mathematics teacher educators in initial teacher training colleges in Malawi. The study involved four mathematics teacher educators in two teacher training colleges located in two different regions of Malawi. Specifically the study explored the following questions: 1) What are the discourse practices that mathematics teacher educators display in their descriptions of multilingual mathematics classrooms? 2) a) What are the discourse practices that mathematics teacher educators display in a college mathematics classroom? b) How do they make available the discourse practices for the student teachers to draw on? Data was collected through pre-observation interviews, classroom observations, reflective interviews and focus group discussions with the mathematics teacher educators. This study has shown that while there are some disconnections between the discourse practices produced in a school multilingual mathematics classroom and a college mathematics classroom, some of the discourse practices that mathematics teachers produced in a college mathematics classroom reinforces the common discourse practices being produced in multilingual mathematics classroom. There are three common discourse practices that were displayed in a college mathematics classroom. These discourse practices are: Initial-Response-Evaluation (Pimm, 1987), traditional lecturing and group discussions. I observed that the IRE and traditional lecturing discourse practices were accompanied by directive discourses for procedural control, and the procedural discourse was the prevalent discourse in all the discourse practices produced. iv Three major themes have emerged from the data analysis. Firstly, the research findings indicate that the mathematics teacher educators regard multilingualism and the language practices that come with it such as code-switching more as a problem rather than a resource for teaching and learning. Secondly, code-switching in college mathematics classroom is not as spontaneous as is research shows it to be in schools; rather it is very much controlled and restricted. Thirdly, the dilemmas of code-switching as discussed by Adler (1998, 2001) are more acute in teacher training colleges, mainly because of the mismatch in the Language-in-Education Policy (LiEP) in schools and tertiary level.