A snapshot in time: Beliefs and practices of a pre-service mathematics teacher through the lens of changing contexts and situations

Abstract

For the last decade research on teachers’ beliefs has made a distinction between mathematics teachers’ professed and attributed beliefs  (practice)  and studies have either found some or no correlation between the two. In this paper we  investigate the beliefs and practices of a novice teacher and conclude that inconsistency between beliefs and practices may be an observer’s perspective that is not necessarily shared by the teacher, and that the view that there is a possible disjuncture does not do justice to the complexity of the practitioner’s tasks nor to the rapidly changing contexts and situations that may occur within a single lesson.