For the last decade research on teachers’ beliefs has made a distinction between mathematics teachers’ professed and attributed beliefs (practice) and studies have either found some or no correlation between the two.

South African teachers exhibit a variety of levels of mathematical knowledge and knowledge of pedagogy; but many appear to have difficulty in changing their teaching practice towards methods of engaging learners in a learner-centred approach. This difficulty suggests that it would be profitable to know more about the apparently complex relationships and interactions between teachers’ beliefs and practices, as well as the effect that changing classroom contexts and activities may have on their practice.

The rationale for using a pre-service teacher was that, although many beginning teachers hold the belief that mathematics is a fixed set of rules and procedures and that learning occurs through solving problems in a step-wise fashion, they are generally not resistant to change and can more easily articulate their thinking in terms of the theory of what they are learning at the time than more experienced teachers who are somewhat removed from their academic experiences (Phillip, Ambrose, Lamb, Sowder, Schappelle, Sowder, Thanheiser, Chauvot, 2007).

In this paper I investigate the beliefs and practices of a novice teacher using questionnaires and graphical representations as well as classroom observations and interviews in order to focus on the explanations of disjuncture between beliefs and practice rather than the differences (Speer, 2005). I conclude that, in the same vein as Skott (2001), inconsistency between beliefs and practices may be an observer’s perspective that is not necessarily shared by the teacher, and that the view that there is a possible disjuncture does not do justice to the complexity of the practitioner’s tasks nor to the rapidly changing contexts and situations that may occur within a single lesson.

References

Philipp, R., Ambrose, R., Lamb, L., Sowder, J., Schappelle, P., Sowder, L., Thanheiser, E. & Chauvot, J. (2007). Effects of early field experiences on the mathematical content knowledge and beliefs of prospective elementary school teachers: an experimental study. Jounal for Research in Mathematics Education, 38(5), 438-475.

Skott, J. (2001). The emerging practices of a novice teacher: the roles of his school mathematics images. Journal of Mathematics Teaching Education, 4(1), 3-28.

Speer, N. (2005). Issues of method and theory in the study of mathematics teachers’ professed and attributed beliefs. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 58(3), 361-391.