Values into Pedagogical Practices in Mathematics: Promoting Prospective Teachers’ Ethical Responsibility for Making Mathematics Meaningful

The notion of “value” has become a critical concept in mathematics education in the past decade. Drawn from Thomas Sebeok’s “global semiotics”, the gap between what students and teachers value in the learning and teaching of mathematics entails the “translation” of signs in term of mathematical communication between the teacher and the student. It requires teachers to share a kind of semioethical responsibility with their students by committing themselves into the making of meanings during the classroom inter-actions. As a teacher educator, I would focus on the research question, “How values in mathematics education can be put into pedagogical practices in mathematics classroom through teachers’ perception of their ethical responsibility for making mathematics meaningful?”. Drawn from the three prospective teachers’ stories, the methodological orientation for conceptualizing the ethical responsibility from the perspective of semioethics grounded on the principles of action research will be elaborated through the theorizing of WISE (“What I See Ethical” in mathematics teaching) project. The findings of the study would not just unfold the critical issue in teacher education for promoting teachers’ ethical responsibility but also open a new perspective integrated into value research in mathematics education through the adoption of the theoretical frameworks of semiotics and semioethics.