What you teach is what you get? Exploring the experiences of prospective mathematics teachers during a teacher education programme

The role of the teacher education programme in preparing mathematics teachers to teach mathematics is an under-researched area within mathematics education. In this paper, we analyse four components of empirical material, each captured from a teacher education programme based in Sweden. Using a methodological approach informed by enactivism and Systemic Functional Linguistics, we build on previous analysis of the language-in-use of one mathematics teacher educator to situate a further layer of analysis, this time, from the perspective of a prospective mathematics teacher. Our findings suggest the prospective teacher in this study, who had positive experiences of mathematics at school, learns to align linguistically with the mathematics teacher educator’s contrasting views of mathematics teaching and learning, and in doing so, creates herself a safe space.