CONVERSATIONS WITH THE 3 SELVES OF THE PROSPECTIVE PRIMARY MATHEMATICS TEACHER

The paper considers the way that a cohort of prospective primary schoo l teachers engage with a mathematics education subject in the first ye ar of their initial teacher education course. They appear to do so thr ough the medium of three selves: self-as-student-learning-to-teach, se lf-as-teacher and self-as-primary-school-student. The interactions bet ween these three selves, and the resulting internal conversations, inf luence the prospective teachers' learning of different topics in the m athematics education subjects. The paper explains the model and discus ses the value of using this model to develop insights in both student teachers and teacher educators that, will promote effective learning i n mathematics education subjects. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All r ights reserved.