Training and investing teachers at all career levels in student-centered practices is widely recognized as a significant challenge (Anderson, 1989; Spillane & Zeuli, 1999). Teacher resistance to educational reform has been well documented for decades (Cohen, 1989, 1990; Cuban, 1988), and mathematics teaching seems particularly impervious. Various studies document the failure of student-centered teaching practices to take hold in K-12 mathematics classrooms in significant ways, including collaborative work, (Jacobs, Hiebert, Givvin, Hollingsworth, Garnier, & Wearne, 2006); problems that are cognitively demanding or that encourage connections (Jacobs, et al., 2006; Stein, Smith, Henningsen, & Silver, 1999), inquiry-based approaches (Weiss, Pasley, Smith, Banilower, & Heck, 2003); teacher questioning to enhance student understanding (Spillane & Zeuli, 1999; Weiss, et al., 2003); classroom-based performance assessments (Borko, Mayfield, Marion, Flexer, & Cumbo, 1997); and student choice (Jacobs, et al., 2006). While pre-service math-teacher education is not solely to blame for this failure, it is also the case that pre-service training has been relatively unsuccessful at promoting nontraditional teaching practices in new mathematics teachers, in spite of the efforts and intentions of university-based teacher educators. Overcoming resistance to student-centered methods has been my major challenge in teaching the secondary-level mathematics-methods course in my institution's credential program. Researchers have identified several phenomena that work against the acceptance of student-centered teaching practices, but two have particular relevance for my pre-service teachers (PSTs). (1) First, because most teachers (and administrators) experienced mostly or exclusively traditional schooling as students, they are unfamiliar with, and have little faith in, nontraditional methods (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Smith, 1996). Second, even when educators stand behind student-centered methods in general, many believe such methods are inappropriate for particular groups of students (Spillane, 2001), such as English-language learners (ELLs), students who lack basic mathematical skills, students of poverty, and students from non-mainstream home cultures. I see both phenomena operating in my methods class: PSTs often do not clearly understand what student-centered practices are, and many do not believe such practices are possible or effective with the kinds of students they expect to teach. (New teachers in our local districts are typically assigned classes with weak mathematics skills and high concentrations of ELLs and low-SES students. This aligns with a general trend in class assignments for beginning teachers [Johnson & The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, 2006].)
