What Does Understanding Mathematics Mean for Teachers?

This book opens up alternative ways of thinking and talking about ways in which a person can "know" a subject (in this case, mathematics), leading to a reconsideration of what it may mean to be a teacherof that subject. In a number of European languages, a distinction is made in ways of knowingthat in the English language is collapsed into the singular word know. In French, for example, to know in the savoirsense is to know things, facts, names, how and why things work, and so on, whereas to know in the connaîtresense is to know a person, a place, or even a thing—namely, an other— in such a way that one is familiar with, or in relationship with this other. Primarily through phenomenological reflection with a touch of empirical input, this book fleshes out an image for what a person’s connaîtreknowing of mathematics might mean, turning to mathematics teachers and teacher educators to help clarify this image.