Presentation held at a local meeting in a mathematics department. The project presented is about uncovering beginning mathematics teacher students' beliefs and attitudes towards mathematics and mathematics teachers.

1. What about mathematics teachers?
A project about uncovering the aspiring
mathematics teachers beliefs about
mathematics and mathematics teachers

2. Students’ first task at HiST
Draw a
mathematics
teacher
NO Stick
figures
allowed!
You have 4
minutes!

3. Why would this be of interest?
Insight into students’ beliefs about mathematics
teachers
Friendly activity to ease up on the first day
Great for discussing myths and meanings about
mathematics and mathematics teachers.
We can refer back to the students’ drawings as
knowledge constructed in class

4. What made me think…
The students who drew these did it in different years with a background from
different parts in the country. How come they were so similar!?

6. What did the students draw?
Around 500 drawings
http://www.slideshare.net/oisteing/
matematikklreren-2010

7. Tiresome categorizing and coding…

8. The human being
- Mostly men (70 %)
- And they were drawn by mostly women (ca. 80 %?)
- Most of them have glasses (70 %)
- Lot of facial hair and at the same time loss of
hair
- Unfriendly appearance
- Checkered clothes (oh, this is so true…)
- Vests (!)
- Clothes with mathematics on (!!)

9. Loss of hair
Facial hair
Glasses
Unfriendly appearance
Checkered clothing

11. The mathematics
• In the shape of finished products on the
blackboard
– Almost never as a process or activity
• Often mathematics that make no sense at
all

14. The pedagogical practice
Many teachers are drawn with some tools
– Rulers
– Pointers and other dated resources
– Almost no calculators
– One single teacher (1) drawn with a laptop or
desktop

17. Some favorites

18. Wow. What happened here?

22. Lærerne gikk som om de gikk igjen. En vissen,
grinet flokk, som gjennom årene utviklet hver sin
særhet til karikatur; fordi deres ensomme liv var
å sitte på kateteret og strø støv på en ungdom de
ikke forstod.
Alexander Kielland, Gift, 1883.

23. The teachers were walking as were they spectres.
A withered, cranky herd that through the mists
of time transformed their own peculiarities into
caricature. Because their lonely lifes were to be
sitting by their desks, sprinkling dust on a youth
they could not understand.
Alexander Kielland, Gift, 1883.
(My translation)