Preservice teachers' stories of mathematics classrooms: Explorations of practice through fictional accounts

This report describes four preservice secondary teachers' fictional accounts about mathematics classrooms. The narrative structures and meanings of the preservice teachers' stories, written while the preservice teachers were enrolled in a secondary methods course, were examined with the goal of gaining insight into the preservice teachers' emerging identities as mathematics teachers. Although past research has examined experienced teachers' stories, little research, if any, has focused on stories written by preservice mathematics teachers or on intentionally fictional stories about mathematics classrooms. This report uses methods of narrative analysis to develop understandings about preservice teachers' storied identities and specifies areas for further investigation into the role of narrative in mathematics teacher education.