94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1555763
Empirical Reconstruction of Mathematics Teaching Practices in Problem-Solving Lessons: A Multi-Method Case Study
Provisionally accepted- 1University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
- 2University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
In this exploratory case study, the teaching practices of two secondary level mathematics teachers are examined within the framework of a sequential multi-method design. To this end, data on the teachers' recurrent patterns of action were collected using video-based classroom observations in problem-solving lessons, semi-structured interviews and video-stimulated recalls. The qualitative analyses of the respective data allowed a differentiated description of the self-reported, observable, and articulable elements of their teaching practices. This includes the requirement situations to which the teachers respond with recurrent patterns of actions, their cognitive and affective dispositions on which they rely, and their situation-specific skills that enable them to adaptively orchestrate their problem-solving lessons. An empirical reconstruction of a selected practice, including a description of its constitutive elements, followed from a superordinate integration of the data by triangulation. This study contributes to the discourse on mathematics teacher education by providing an innovative study design for the empirical reconstruction of teaching practices. Moreover, its findings validate the theoretical assumption that teaching practices are an expression of mathematics teachers' professional competence and expertise.
Keywords: Expertise, Mathematics teachers, multi-methods, Practices, Problem Solving
Received: 05 Jan 2025; Accepted: 08 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Brungs, Buchholtz, Streit, Theile and Rott. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Christine Luise Brungs, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.