What Knowledge Do Teachers Need for Teaching Mathematics Through Applications and Modelling

This paper begins by describing teachers’ knowledge as the creation and development of increasingly sophisticated models or ways of interpreting the tasks of teaching. One study illuminates several ways that pre-service teachers perceive the processes of modelling and the limits of their experiences with stochastic models. Results from a second study indicate that teachers need to have a broad and deep understanding of the diversity of approaches that students might take with modeling tasks. The second study also suggests a reversal in the usual roles of teachers and students by engaging students as evaluators of models.