SCHOOL- AND UNIVERSITY-BASED MATHEMATICS TEACHER EDUCATORS’ SHARED EXPERTISE IN A THIRD SPACE

In this chapter, we draw on the notion of third spaces to conceptualize how the diverse expertise of mathematics teacher educators can be shared in teacher education activities that cross school-university boundaries. To illustrate the complexity of sharing academic and practitioner expertise, we provide detailed examples from the collaborative planning activities of a team of school- and university-based mathematics teacher educators in a grades K-4 professional development school in the United States. Using the construct of boundary objects (Star, 1989) and theoretical perspectives from communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), we provide examples of areas of expertise that influenced the team’s joint enterprise (co-planning for a mathematics methods course). These examples extend our understandings about how academic and practitioner knowledge become integrated in third spaces.