Jag undervisar i matematikdidaktik på grundlärarprogrammen. Jag är kursansvarig för kursen Undervisning och utveckling för grundlärare åk 4-6 och jag undervisar i motsvarande kurs i f-3 programmet. Där får jag utmana lärarstudenter att se klassrummet och undervisningen som en del av ett system och en del av många akademier. Med ett teoretiskt och historiskt perspektiv på matematikundervisningen får vi möjlighet att diskutera varför matematikundervisningen ser ut som den gör och vi får möjlighet att kritiskt granska olika idéer om matematikundervisning. Jag undervisar också en hel del i vetenskapligt skrivande (Självständigt arbete). Det roligaste i dessa kurser är när studenter ser värdet av forskning och hur forskning skulle kunna vara ett stöd i det kommande yrkeslivet. 

Mitt forskningsintresse rör matematiklärare och matematiklärarutbildning. I min avhandlingsstudie beskrev jag en undervisningsekologi för en matematiklärare i Sverige. Det betyder att jag studerade läraren och hennes undervisning men också de kollegiala samtal hon deltog i, läroboken hon använde och läroplanen som gällde. Detta projekt har lett mig vidare och nu intresserar jag mig för den teoretiska grund som lärare har och behöver. Jag studerar för tillfället kurslitteraturen i lärarutbildningen och vad studenterna blir erbjudna. 

Ett annat intresse som kommer ur avhandlingsprojektet är hur lärare kan få tillgång till forskning så att den blir ett stöd i undervisningen. Inte som ett recept att följa eller en uppgift att läsa och diskutera utan ett levande verktyg. Är ni en grupp lärare som vill arbeta tillsammans med mig för att utforska hur forskning kan bli ett stöd för er i matematikundervisningen så blir jag glad om ni hör av er. 

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

• The Ecology of Mary’s Mathematics Teaching

  2018. Anna Pansell (et al.).

  Avhandling (Dok)

  Teachers’ mathematics teaching has been studied in many different ways. Such studies not often include more contexts than the teacher’s teaching practice. An assumption in this thesis is that in order to create a deeper understanding of mathematics teachers’ teaching we also need to study the contexts around mathematics teachers, and in relation to each other. Together such contexts create an environment for teachers’ teaching. The determination of how mathematics is taught is not decided in any of the contexts alone. Rather, all contexts participate in the determination of how mathematics is taught and teachers need to negotiate how different contexts privilege both mathematics and mathematics education. In this study, I have studied one teacher’s, Mary’s, teaching practice as well as three contexts from her close environment, the teacher group she participated in, the textbooks she used, and the national curriculum she was bound to follow. To study how mathematics and mathematics teaching was privileged in the four studied contexts became a way to trace how the contexts participate in the determination, in short, their co-determination of how mathematics is taught.

  With an aim to deepen the understanding of how the environment of a teacher’s teaching enables and constrains mathematics teaching, the four contexts were studied in relation to each other in different ways, in four studies. First, the context of Mary’s mathematics teaching was studied in relation to the teacher group in how the justifications of Mary’s mathematics teaching was constituted in relation to a teacher group discussion. Second, Mary’s teaching of problem-solving was studied in relation to how problem-solving was privileged in both mathematics textbook and national curriculum. Third, praxeology was explored as an analytical tool to understand how mathematics was privileged in teaching practice in relation to the privileging of mathematics in textbooks. Fourth, all four contexts were studied to trace arguments and principles for teaching rational numbers and how these enable and constrain the teaching of rational numbers.

  To address these different contexts, ATD as described by Chevallard was adopted. In ATD, the environment of contexts with influence of teachers’ practices, is described as an ecology with levels that co-determine each other. The studied contexts represented some of these levels of co-determination. The privileging of mathematics and mathematics teaching was studied from a varied data material. Data from Mary’s teaching practice was transcripts of classroom observations and interviews. Data from the teacher group was transcripts of teacher meetings. Data from the textbook context was the textbooks and teacher guides Mary used. Data from the context of the national curriculum was the mathematics syllabus accompanied with clarifying and explanatory comments.

  The analyses revealed a strong resemblance of the mathematical communication between the different contexts. They all emphasised similar approaches to problem-solving, aspects of rational numbers, mathematical values, or explanations of angles. Mary, however, anchored her arguments for mathematics teaching in partially different theoretical principles than those privileged in the ecology. Theoretical principles were not explicitly communicated in any context. They were inferred from the communication. An implication generated by these findings is the importance for teachers to engage in the principles behind the privileging expressed in contexts they need to negotiate. These principles need to be discussed and challenged. Another implication is the relevance of allowing for teachers to engage in research literature, and to have influences from other sources than their immediate contexts. The thesis also point to the need to study textbooks and national curriculum, not in terms of how they are enacted by teachers, but what they privilege. By doing so teachers practices may be understood in the sense of what teachers have to negotiate, where the consequence is a deeper understanding of constraints and affordances for teachers’ teaching practices.

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• Mathematics Teachers’ Teaching Practices in Relation to Textbooks

  2018. Anna Pansell, Lisa Björklund Boistrup. The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast 15 (3)

  Artikel

  In this article, we explore affordances of adopting the framework of praxeology by Chevallard in the analysis of mathematics classroom communication in relation to the communication in a textbook. While adopting praxeology, we carried out detailed analysis of communication in both classroom data and textbooks. The construed praxeologies describe the organisation of knowledge expressed for the same type of task in both classroom and textbook. The praxeologies were compared, with specific attention to the teacher’s practice. This analysis illuminates how teachers’ practices, realised in classroom communication, may be compared to other texts describing the same topics, with a focus on procedures, explanations, theoretical aspects, et cetera. Hence, praxeology as a framework enabled an analytical structuring of classroom and textbook communication, and consequently a systematic comparison. In other studies about the use of mathematics textbooks the teaching frequently is categorised as regulated by the textbook, and in this article, we problematize this. The teaching practice was, in fact,closely related to the textbook when comparing exercises and procedures, but when specifically examining the explanations of concepts, it became possible to discern how the teaching practice differed from the textbook.

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• The teaching of mathematical problem-solving in Swedish classrooms

  2017. Anna Pansell, Paul Andrews. Nordisk matematikkdidaktikk, NOMAD 22 (1), 65-84

  Artikel

  In this paper we examine the teaching of mathematical problem-solving to grade five students of one well-regarded and experienced Swedish teacher, whom we call Mary. Working within a decentralised curriculum in which problem-solving is centrally placed, Mary is offered little systemic support in her professional decision making with respect to problem-solving instruction. Drawing on Lester’s and Schroeder’s descriptions of teaching for, about and through problem-solving, we draw on multiple sources of data, derived from interviews and videotaped lessons, to examine how Mary’s problem-solving-related teaching is constituted in relation to the weaklyframed curriculum and the unregulated textbooks that on which she draws. The analyses indicate that Mary’s emphases are on teaching for and about problem-solving rather than through, although the ambiguities that can be identified throughout her practice with respect to goals, curricular aims and the means of their achievement can also be identified in the curricular documents from which she draws.

  Läs mer om The teaching of mathematical problem-solving in Swedish classrooms

• Justifications for mathematics teaching

  2015. Anna Pansell, Lisa Björklund-Boistrup. Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, 1637-1643

  Konferens

  The broad interest of this paper lies in how a mathematics teacher, Mary, justifies her professional decision making. The reported study draws on aspects of a PhD project and analyses Mary's communications within a collaborative teacher meeting focused on the teaching of mathematics to grade five students. The analysis, drawing on social semiotics, highlighted the significance of artefacts, such as multiplication tests, in Mary's articulated decision making. We also give account for what is addressed in a teacher's justifications and how the teacher relates to her students in the justifications. Finally, we discuss the wider social and political context in which the teacher is working.

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