Abstract

Reforming pedagogy in mathematics education has been the focus of numerous educational reforms around the world. Productive Pedagogies is a framework for reflection on teaching that aims at improving student’s intellectual reasoning, making school teaching and learning more connected to students’ everyday lives, and addressing the concerns of equity support that students need. This paper reports on a study using the Productive Pedagogies framework with a group of final year preservice teachers at a teacher education college in Saudi Arabia. The students were introduced to the framework in a unit on mathematics education and were observed during the following semester in their field experience to ascertain their level of understanding and use of the framework. The results showed that there was a high level of acceptance of the framework as an effective tool for planning and performing teaching. In particular, the preservice teachers demonstrated a shift towards student-centred teaching. Reflecting on some of the problems that were observed, this paper makes some recommendations for teacher training programs in general.