An American elementary school teacher's teaching practice toward student-centered mathematics classroom culture

미국 초등학교 교사의 학생중심 수학교실문화 형성사례 및 교수법 개발에 관한 소고

The mathematics education community is seeking to change a teacher-centered class-room culture to a student-centered culture. However, the real transition is not easy, even for teachers who are eager and willing to teach differently. The challenge for teachers is to use the social structure of the classrooms to nurture students' development toward mathematical ways of thinking and communicating as well as their under-standing of mathematical concepts and processes. By introducing an elementary teacher's teaching practice and professional develop-ment along with her classroom episodes, this paper is to make strides toward an enriched understanding of the culture of the elementary mathematics classrooms in which students may have a lot of opportunities to develop conceptual under standing and math-ematical disposition. This paper first provides a detailed description of the classroom flow in terms of general social norms and sociomathematical norms in order to explore how the teacher and the students have established such a student-centered math-ematics microculture. This paper then analyzes the teacher's teaching approach and professional development.