What is Teaching | Learning

Improving opportunities for under-served (and all) students to learn mathematics requires shifts in what teachers know and can do. This chapter explores teachers' opportunities to learn: How might collaborative inquiry support them to make such shifts? In particular, the chapter explores co-teaching as a possible solution to the complex challenge of implementing reform-based mathematics pedagogy in primary (elementary) mathematics classrooms. It draws on the voices of teachers who worked together to develop ambitious, talk-based pedagogies in their classrooms where the use of “talk moves” was a particular focus for their shared work. It examines the transformative power of co-teaching as a feature of the teachers' collaborative activity, outlining three fields of practice that interacted to expand teachers' possibilities for action: their enacted practice, their conversations about practice, and their noticing of student thinking within practice. Working across difference served as catalyst and context for the transformation of teachers' practices.