Policy supported out-of-field mathematics teacher professional development and professionality: possibilities for mathematics teachers and teachers of mathematics

In education systems where out-of-field secondary mathematics teachers have become more prevalent, policy responses have included funding programmes to address these teachers’ professional development needs. We examine the implications of programme design for the professionality of out-of-field teacher participants by analysing and comparing three government supported professional development programmes that have been implemented over the last twenty years, two in England and one in Ireland. We review research-based reports of these programmes by analysing the explicit or implicit ways that different professionalities for teaching mathematics are supported. We did this principally through analysing the forms of knowledge, agency and sociality integral to the programmes, supported by considering the programmes’ modes of professional learning, and material and systemic arrangements. The application of the theoretical frameworks provides a model for the analysis of other programmes. The analysis draws attention to how policy supported programmes offer the potential to extend teachers’ existing professional identity to also embrace being a mathematics teacher or alternatively positioning them as technicians who teach mathematics.