Reconceptualising pedagogy as curriculum: a poststructualist analysis of the implications for preservice mathematics education

Abstract

One of the main contributions poststructuralism makes to education is its careful and detailed theorisation of the productivity of pedagogic interactions and relationships. In the sense that knowledge and identity are (re}produced in relationships of power in teaching-learning interaction, pedagogy is reconceptualised as curriculum. Although my teaching in mathematics education in the tertiary sector is informed by poststructuralist notions of the human subject, an analysis of the discursive (pedagogic) practices reveals that they could be seen to reinforce traditional patterns of teacher authority and learner dependence that the novice teachers had previously experienced in school. Given the current emphasis in mathematics education on student initiated investigative learning processes and ownership of knowledge, the question arises as to how well ways-of-being a teacher and learner constituted in teacher education equip novice teachers for teaching mathematics in new times.