Identity and Practice: Preservice Teacher Learning within a Practice-Based Mathematics Methods Course

In an era of asking teachers to engage students and content in complex ways, teacher educators have yet to address the problem of preparing preservice teachers. This study contributes to our understanding of teacher learning, specifically considering the interplay among identity and practice as new teachers transition from preservice teacher education contexts into their classrooms. Exploring who a teacher is and how she experiences herself in practice reveals the complex, intertwined nature of identity and practice and illuminates the critical role that identity plays in preservice teacher learning.;My dissertation tracked teacher participation following a sample of elementary teachers from their preservice mathematics methods course into their classrooms as first purposefully chosen instructional activity that served as a focus in the practice-based methods course and that travelled with teachers across settings. Within the bounded space of the counting instructional activity, I documented evidence of developing teaching practice and identity. Drawing from Wenger, Gee, Sfard and Prusak, and others, my examination of identity was guided by notions of how one experiences herself in practice, bids to be recognized as a certain kind of person, and tells stories about herself. Throughout my study of teacher participation across settings, practice and identity are intricately interwoven such that a discussion of one could not occur without the other.;I present my story of preservice teacher learning along different dimensions, ranging from the details of one teacher's trajectory, to the contrasting participation across pairs of teachers, to the commonalities that existed across the entire sample. While there is clear evidence of preservice teacher learning over time, the interaction among who a teacher is and what she does yields a rich story of the range of experiences that teachers have as they move from preservice to classroom contexts. My study thus pushes for further examinations of the interplay among identity and practice as we continue to find better ways to support preservice teacher learning.