Using half-baked microworlds to challenge teacher educators’ knowing

This article illustrates how four teacher educators in training were challenged with respect to their epistemology and perceptions of teaching and learning mathematics through their interactions with expressive digital media during a professional development course. The research focused on their experience of communally constructing artifacts and their reflections on the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning with digital media. I discussed three different ways in which this media was used by the teachers; first, as a means to engage in technical-applied mathematics to engineer mathematical models; second, as a means to construct models for students to engage in experimental-constructivist activity; thirdly, as a means to engage in a discussion of a challenging mathematical problem.