Tension Between Theory and Practice as a Challenge for Teachers’ Professionalization

Our collaboration with Petra Scherer took place in the context of two Comenius projects. The first focused on ways of developing the professional competence of primary teachers. We gradually adopted the idea that self- and joint-reflection is an appropriate way to connect theory and practice, as the composition of our project team allowed the possibility of improving the quality of mathematics education and also contributing to the development of didactic theory. Thus, reflection, and especially joint reflection, became the subject of our research for an extended period. This chapter reports our conclusions about some aspects of (joint) reflection, including reflection on tasks created by students, and reflection on specific situations, using a model of an in-depth teaching structure that enabled structured reflections on teaching/learning episodes from primary mathematics. The second project enabled us to become more familiar with the idea of Substantial Learning Environments and led us to consider the possibilities of differentiation in heterogeneous mathematics classes. This chapter highlights how Petra Scherer’s work has influenced us in many ways.