What to leave out when preservice mathematics education goes from four years to one: a poststructural account

Abstract

With one-year teacher education programs for elementary and middle-school teachers becoming popular, teacher educators are put on the spot as to how novice teachers should be prepared for teaching mathematics. In this paper I delineate, and hold up to academic debate, epistemological and ontological assumptions that inform my teaching in a newly introduced Graduate Diploma of Education program. From a poststructuralist perspective the question becomes not one of what to leave out, but of how to vary instructional practices to produce competent, inquiry-oriented teachers of mathematics in less time.