Pre-service mathematics teachers' whole-class dialogs during field practice

Abstract

This paper is based upon an intervention study where pre-service teachers plan whole-class mathematical dialogs together with their mentor and lecturer. Learning to conduct dialogs is increasingly in focus in teacher education, and in this paper, we examine one whole-class dialog to learn more about its nature. We show that the pre-service teacher fails to involve several pupils in the dialog at the same time, leading to a series of shorter dialogs with one pupil at a time. In the dialog, the communication often ends up being teacher-dominated.