Learning Through Teaching Mathematics

This volume explores how and when teachers' knowledge develops through teaching. The book presents international views on teachers' learning from their practice; the chapters are written by mathematicians or mathematics educators from Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, UK, and USA. They address diverse content – numerical literacy, geometry, algebra, and real analysis – and a variety of levels – elementary school, secondary school, undergraduate mathematics, and teacher education courses. The authors employ different methodological tools and different theoretical perspectives as they consider teaching in different learning environments: lecturing, small group work on problems and tasks, mathematical explorations with the support of technological software, or e-learning. Despite these differences, the authors exemplify and analyze teachers’ learning that occurred and address the question: "What kinds of knowledge are developed as a result of teaching mathematics and what are the factors that support or impede such development?"

Further, the chapters explore interactions and interrelationships between the enhancement of mathematical and pedagogical knowledge. The important and original contribution of this book is that it ties together the notions of teachers’ knowledge and complexity of teacher’s work, while presenting them from a relatively unexplored perspective – learning through teaching mathematics.