CRAFT KNOWLEDGE IN MATHEMATICS TEACHING

This paper focuses attention on approaches to teaching which impede teachers' development of craft knowledge through their engagement with students. Using video recordings of mathematics lessons and follow-up conversation with the teachers, two episodes are considered. In the first episode the teacher used an approach which guided the student tightly, overlooking the theories she had learned the previous year, and in the second episode she appears to close down opportunities for discussion of the unanticipated situations that arose. It is argued that both approaches denied the teachers opportunities to learn from the situation and thus to develop craft knowledge.