Methods, Maps, and Meaningful Mathematics

This article is a reflection of one mathematics educator’s journey towards being a critical mathematics teacher educator. By illustrating the manner in which she selected, developed and provided an opportunity for bilingual pre-service teachers (BPSTs) to teach a mathematics lesson with a social justice component to fifth graders in a methods course, she reflects on her own growth and its potential for transformational pedagogy with her students and their future students. The decision making process of task selection, introduction of the task to BPSTs, and the support provided to them to teach the lesson, is articulated in order to make visible the challenge in transforming a teaching practice. Mathematics educators who are also seeking to infuse moresocial-justice focused mathematics activities into their methods courses may relate to ideas in this article, and find support in reading the processes of an early-career teacher educator asking questions of her own praxis.