ABSTRACT
This chapter, we investigate a group of four preservice teachers’ written and oral descriptions of their practicum experience at the beginning of their second year of their teacher education in Norway. They were placed in a second-grade class where 19 of the 24 students did not have Norwegian as their first language. The preservice teachers discussed their experiences of facilitating mathematic modelling, an innovative project that they had to investigate as part of their teacher education. Using a theoretical framework that considers how a focus on the school students’ use of different modes conveys meaning, it was possible to identify how the context affected the preservice teachers’ considerations about their teaching and the children’s learning. When outside, the use of concrete materials by the students was valued by the preservice teachers, but when concretes were used inside, this was seen as being part of the identity of students who struggle and who had a different home language to Norwegian. The theoretical framework provides teacher educators with a way to identify how preservice teachers could improve their understandings about teaching mathematics, so the different modes for conveying meaning are valued as resources that students bring to their mathematics learning.
