Real Life’ in Everyday and Academic Math: Analyzing Ways of Teaching Comparison of Numbers in Senior Primary Mathematics Education

This paper draws on the author’s experience that is based on teaching practices of Mathematics Education students. Mathematics Education students consist of school mathematics teachers who are already in the teaching field, and are currently upgrading their qualifications, and student teachers who are currently training to became mathematics teachers at the University of Namibia. These student teachers used four different approaches to teach comparison of numbers at senior primary level (Grade5 -7). School mathematics teachers who are already in the teaching field are observed while conducting their microteaching lessons during School-Based-studied (SBS). Student teachers who are currently training to become mathematics teachers at the University of Namibia were observed while giving their Microteaching lessons to fellow trainees. Data from these observations is used to indicate that contexts that teachers incorporate into the mathematics may not necessarily be institutionalized everyday activities. Secondly, these observations are used to challenge the assumption that: (1) individual teachers are always able to design teaching contexts that draw on every day, for mathematics learning, (2) Teachers are able to predict for their students, how mathematics should be learnt through the use of everyday contexts. In analyzing teacher utterances, I draw from Paul Dowling’s notion of recontextualisation, as well as his language of description, that is used to describe school mathematics texts.