Events that traverse us in a Mathematics classroom

narratives of experiences of a preservice teacher in the Pedagogical Residency Program

Abstract

In this narrative inquiry, we aim to produce formative meanings from experiences that traversed a mathematics teacher in initial teacher education within the context of her participation in the Pedagogical Residency Program. Immersed in an eighth-grade elementary school class, the preservice teacher felt compelled to narrate her lived experiences through classroom narratives in a research study that conceives mathematics as an event and takes seriously the meanings that this mathematics, produced in basic education, can communicate. The narratives were constructed from classroom observations recorded in field diaries and from experiences that traversed her in a federal school in Rio de Janeiro. By returning to those scenarios through narratives and making meaning of her experiences, the preservice teacher positions herself as a character in this research. In this sense, we seek to bring to light the minutiae that inhabit a classroom, with the intent of transporting teachers in formation—as they engage with narratives as formative instruments—to an environment that promotes encounters with their teaching professionalism. In the narrative analysis, we seek to situate ourselves in a crossing alongside other teachers, valuing the effects of these stories on the paths experienced by the preservice teacher as narrator, while constructing a plot that considers the singularities of these experiences to create teaching narratives. Through this research, we establish that in the underworld of a mathematics lesson, there exist unexpected scenarios that escape any attempt at control, enacted by students inspired to share the mathematics they produce as events that traverse us in a classroom.