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Teachers and `Street Children': On Becoming a Teacher of Mathematics

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Abstract

The phenomenon of `street children' where youngpeople, for various reasons, live on thestreets of towns and cities is found all overthe world in varying degrees and forms. InSouth Africa, one approach to take care aboutthe plight of these children has been to set upand run what are referred to as `streetshelters'. One such street shelter, the onlyone exclusively for girls in the city ofDurban, is Tennyson House. In this paper Idescribe an innovative outreach programmeintegrated with a university curriculum inwhich a group of pre-service teachers takingmathematics education as a major were involvedin teaching mathematics to girls at TennysonHouse. From the vantage point of a mathematicsteacher educator in the programme, I describeand reflect on what was experienced and learnedfrom the intervention in terms of threeaspects: learning about learners; learningabout teaching (mathematics) and learning aboutrelationships.

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  1. School of Educational Studies, University of Durban-Westville, Private Bag X54001, Durban, 4000, South Africa

    Renuka Vithal

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  1. Renuka Vithal
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Vithal, R. Teachers and `Street Children': On Becoming a Teacher of Mathematics. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 6, 165–183 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023960111901

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