Student Teachers Learning to Plan Mathematics Lessons

Most educational professionals would agree that planning is an essential component of teaching. Such planning, educational texts and reports often stress, must focus on the specifying of clear objectives and a clear lesson structure. As a result, a common framework used to introduce student teachers to the complexities of lesson planning is premised on starting the planning process with specifying objectives. Yet there is considerable evidence that experienced teachers do not plan in this way. Their planning is likely to more idiosyncratic or they may plan in different ways depending on particular circumstances. The effect of this can be that the more skilful the planning, or the more it happens at unscheduled times, the more difficult it is for student teachers to understand how successful lesson planning is achieved. In this article we review the basis for introducing student teachers to lesson planning and examine some of the advantages and disadvantages of beginning with an emphasis on the explicit formulation of lesson objectives. We argue that while starting with objectives may help to focus student teachers on what pupils might learn during a particular lesson, there is a danger that it produces rigid plans that emphasise the more easily measurable parts of the mathematics curriculum at the expense of the more creative and spontaneous aspects of mathematical thinking.