Professional teachers learning task as learning opportunities in pre-service mathematics teacher education:a discussion on mean, mode, and median

Abstract

O This study investigates what professional knowledge is mobilized by prospective mathematics teachers during the implementation of a Professional Teachers Learning Task (PTLT) on measures of central tendency (mean, mode, and median), analyzing professional learning opportunities through the PLOT model (Roles and Actions of the Teacher Educator, PTLT, and Discursive Interactions Among Participants). Grounded in the MTSK and PLOT frameworks, the study adopts a qualitative approach and was conducted within a teacher education course with six participants. The data were organized into analytical episodes to show how analyzing Basic Education students’ responses generates formative discussions. The results indicate that interactions in small groups and in a whole-class plenary session trace a pathway from diagnosing students’ errors and conceptions to making mathematical procedures explicit and discussing instructional decisions. The discussion interprets these movements as professional learning opportunities, highlighting the articulation among the analysis of records of practice, teacher noticing, and the decomposition and recomposition of teaching practice, concluding that the PTLT, mediated by the facilitator, supports the development of specialized knowledge for teaching statistics in initial teacher education.