Abstract
Mathematical investigations involve searching for patterns, formulating, testing, and justifying conjectures, reflecting, and generalising. Doing investigations in the classroom is a powerful activity for students’ learning but poses many challenges to the teacher. To study the professional knowledge involved in this kind of work was the aim of a collaborative action-research project that involved one classroom teacher and two university teacher educators. We used narratives to depict relevant elements of teachers’ activity and to show key aspects of their dilemmas and uncertainties. This paper discusses the role of the collaborative work undertaken by the participants in the project as they reflected about classroom practices and curriculum issues, based on a narrative of a class where sixth grade students worked on a mathematical investigation.
This work is part of a larger project concerning pupils’ mathematical investigations in the classroom called Matemática para Todos: Investigações na Sala de Aula, carried between 1995 and 1999 at Centro de Investigaçâo em Educação da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa and funded by Junta Nacional de Investigação Cientifica e Tecnológica and Instituto de Inovação Educacional.
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Da Ponte, J.P., Segurado, M.I., Oliveira, H. (2003). A Collaborative Project Using Narratives. In: Peter-Koop, A., Santos-Wagner, V., Breen, C., Begg, A. (eds) Collaboration in Teacher Education. Mathematics Teacher Education, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1072-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1072-5_7
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