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Mathematics Teachers as Products and Agents: To Be and Not to Be. That’s the Point!

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The Disorder of Mathematics Education

Abstract

Studying mathematics teachers in the Political invites to understand how teachers’ subjectivities emerge in the entanglement of the individual in discursive-material formations. We focus on the power effects of the expert discourses by international agencies such as OECD and UNESCO in the fabrication of the mathematics teacher’s subjectivity. Deploying a Foucault-inspired discourse analysis on a series of documents produced by these agencies, we argue that nowadays cultural thesis about who the mathematics teacher should be are framed in a double bind of the teacher as a policy product and as a sales agent. Narratives about the mathematics teacher are made possible within a dispositive of control, which makes mathematics education and mathematics teachers the cornerstone for realizing current market-oriented, competitive, and globalized societies.

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Correspondence to Alex Montecino .

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Montecino, A., Valero, P. (2017). Mathematics Teachers as Products and Agents: To Be and Not to Be. That’s the Point!. In: Straehler-Pohl, H., Bohlmann, N., Pais, A. (eds) The Disorder of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34006-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34006-7_9

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