The premise and promise of inquiry based mathematics in pre-service teacher education : a poststructuralist analysis

Abstract

Many teacher educators have recently implemented inquiry based instructional practices into their programs (Crawford & Deer, 1993; Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996; Klein, 1996,1997,1998,2001; Schuck, 1996; Tillema & Knol, 1997). In mathematics education the promise has been that preservice teachers’ socialisation into new interactive ways of learning will not only lead to the (re)construction of powerful mathematical ideas and relationships, but that it will facilitate the implementation of these inquiry based practices in the classroom. This promise, however, is not often realised (Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996; Tillema & Knol, 1997). One reading of why this may be so, relying on and made visible through a poststructuralist analytic lens, is (a) that perhaps the preservice teachers’ ability to act in inquiry-based, generative ways in the classroom does not necessarily follow from, but is produced or constituted in, teaching/learning interactions in school and teacher education, and (b) it may be that pedagogic practices in teacher education unintentionally and invisibly reproduce old epistemologies and ontologies that support knowledge transmission and teacher authority over student authored engagement and construction of ideas. In this paper the premise of a rational, autonomous agent of change on which so much of current practice is based is challenged, and the possible implications for teacher education discussed.