PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
An exploration of the factors that influence the enactment of teachers’ knowledge of exponential functions
Page: 621
The undergraduate preparation of pre-service teachers requires attention to the factors that enable and constrain their application of mathematical knowledge to positive effect in the classroom. In this paper, we examine how the instructional decisions of three in-service secondary mathematics teachers were influenced by individually consistent patterns of such mediating factors. Acknowledging that such factors might be content-dependent, we focus on teachers’ instruction of exponential functions, a topic foundational to both secondary and collegiate mathematics. We developed models of each teacher’s implicit learning theory, professional identity, values and goals for students’ learning, and beliefs about the nature of mathematics and about what constitutes genuine mathematical engagement. We illustrate these results by summarizing our analyses of a selection of mediating factors for each teacher. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the preparation of pre-service mathematics teachers at the undergraduate level.