Learning within Communities of Practice in Preservice Secondary School Teachers Education

We present the main features of a study that explored the learning processes of a group of preservice mathematics teachers in a methods course. We discuss the implications of using the communities of practice perspective in designing and developing teacher training programs. LEARNING IN PRESERVICE MATHEMATICS TEACHER EDUCATION Teachers neither work, nor learn alone. Teaching and learning to teach are social practices and collaborative enterprises (Secada & Adajian, 1997). That is why research in teacher education has become increasingly concerned with teachers' development from perspectives rooted in sociocultural views of learning (Ler-man, 2001; Llinares, 1998). In particular, Wenger's social theory of learning (Wenger, 1998) and its notion of community of practice are becoming popular as a conceptual framework for exploring the learning processes of mathematics teachers working together. However, " while mathematics teacher education researchers are creating contexts that enable teacher learning and describe what