Special Issue: Preparing To Teach Mathematics Pathways Beyond 16

This special issue addresses two questions of national and international interest: is there anything distinctive about learning to teach the kinds of advanced mathematics that students meet towards the end of compulsory education? If so, how does this affect the priorities and the design of secondary teacher development programmes? The four papers, submitted through the external peer-review process under the overall editorship of Anne Watson, show how the field of mathematics education can develop from opportunities to analyse existing pedagogies, innovate in teaching and research those processes. They focus on interactions between teachers’ post-16 mathematics teaching and their professional learning, in the context of England’s pre-university curriculum. Two pathways are considered: the well-established ‘A-level’ mathematics course that prepares for mathematics-rich undergraduate degrees, and the newer ‘Core Maths’ course that aims for students to become ‘users of mathematics’ in authentic contexts. The background to this special issue comes from two discussions. The 2016–17 seminars Developing Pedagogy in Advanced Mathematics were organized by the editors as part of the Further Mathematics Support Programme. We sought to create an academic discussion among initial teacher educators and researchers, who often work in institutional silos, raising the profile of preparation for teaching post-16 and championing cross-institution provision. Participants, including all authors, collaborated in comparing, justifying and critiquing the approaches embedded in their own courses. The ideas in these papers owe much to that critique from other researcher-practitioners.