Mathematics Teachers’ Learning at the Boundaries of Teaching and Workplace

This chapter describes how novice and experienced mathematics teachers integrate authentic workplace contexts into mathematics teaching. This goal was inspired by the European MaSciL project and introduced to the teachers in the context of a masters programme in mathematics education. Under an Activity Theory perspective, we use the notions of activity system and boundary crossing to study the process of teachers’ professional learning. In particular, we analyse teachers’ boundary crossings between two activity systems: mathematics teaching and workplace. Results indicate that collaborative task design and reflection made teachers combine elements from the workplace into mathematics teaching. Different ways of linking reality and mathematics teaching were identified in the modelling process in which the students were asked to be engaged.