Research indicates that many students enter a teacher education program with already well-conceived notions of the kinds of teachers they want to become and the roles teacher educators should play in getting them there (Britzman, 2003; Phelan & Sumsion, 2008). Emerging professional identities are closely tied to prospective teachers’ previous experiences as students, including their epistemological images of subject area content knowledge (Muis, 2004), their pedagogical images of “the good teacher” (Moore, 2004; Walls, 2010), and their stance on conformity with institutional structures and school regulations (Brown & McNamara, 2005).

This paper draws from a larger research program which embraces the belief that, in teacher education, there are more difficult questions to ask than those which can be readily answered through a collection of teaching techniques. The key research questions asked in the program, and partially addressed through this paper, are: How do teachers experience and live out their sense of agency and identity formation when immersed in the powerful discourses of school mathematics? How could a reconceptualized image of teacher education disrupt the dominant discourses of conformity and compliance, while supporting multiple ways of being a thoughtful and reflective teacher? In other words, the research program asks how poststructuralist concepts of identity and agency can open spaces for imagining multiple ways of being teacher, learner, inquirer.

While the research context is Canada, the focus and goals of the research are of European and international significance due to ongoing global initiatives to re-form and re-vision secondary mathematics teacher education. Creating mathematics classroom learning environments that are characterized by meaningful student discussions, deep understanding and connections, multiple approaches and ways of knowing, and reflective practices is an international research focus. In effect, student critical inquiry has become a defining feature of reform movements as well as a coordinate system through which ‘good’ teaching is mapped. Going beyond merely challenging essentialist notions of ‘good teacher’ techniques, this research embraces new pedagogies of teacher education that rely on critique as a way to unsettle taken for granted techniques and practices, with a view to identifying themes and critical incidents in pedagogical innovation and transformation.

Reconceptualizing mathematics teacher education means rethinking the dominant conceptual framework for questions of how, why, and what could be in teacher education. To this end, the research challenges and disrupts traditional discourses of teacher education programs and associated field experience, tracing the intersections of identity, agency and reflexivity in mathematics teacher education using Bourdieu’s sociological theory (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977).  The key concepts of Bourdieu’s social field theory (such as habitus, field, doxa, capital) reflect the complexities of teacher education by focusing on the dynamic relationships between structure and agency within a social practice, pointing to the promise of social change through critical reflexivity. Such an approach highlights the network of relations and discursive practices that support (and (re)produce) traditional practices in the teaching of mathematics, acknowledging the normalized practices and dispositions of schooling as strong forces in shaping teacher identity and agency (Nolan, 2012).

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