Portuguese mathematics student teachers' evolving teaching modes: A modified teacher development experiment

This study sought to trace and understand the evolution of four Portuguese mathematics student teachers' teaching modes throughout their student teaching experience and within the context of a modified teacher development experiment. In brief, the teaching modes are comprised of teachers' questioning, listening, and responding approaches in the classroom, and they are related to teachers' key beliefs about mathematics and its teaching and learning, levels of reflective thinking, and dominant patterns of classroom interaction.;A conceptual framework was built encompassing three teaching modes: evaluative, interpretive, and generative. The generative mode is the one that resonates the most with the current reform recommendations for school mathematics. The conceptual framework served to guide and to inform the data collection and analysis procedures; yet, it was also investigated in its adequacy to analyze and interpret classroom teaching in order to improve students' learning.;The results of this study suggested a significant influence of the student teachers' key beliefs about mathematics and its teaching and learning on their disposition and willingness to teach in an increasingly generative mode. The conceptual framework proved itself to provide a useful tool for stimulating the student teachers' reflection on their classroom practices. In addition, it was instrumental in the planning of the interaction-reflection cycles of the study's research design and in the structuring of the student teachers' accounts of practice, which characterized their teaching modes during each one of the four phases of the study. Yet, some aspects of the conceptual framework were problematized, namely the relationships between: (a) the student teachers' key beliefs about mathematics and its teaching and learning, and their reflective thinking; and (b) the student teachers' teaching modes and dominant patterns of classroom interaction. This study raised several questions for future research and suggested some implications for teacher educators and classroom teachers.