Developing expertise: how enactivism re-frames mathematics teacher development

In this article, we present a re-framing of teacher development that derives from our convictions regarding the enactive approach to cognition and the biological basis of being. We firstly set out our enactivist stance and then distinguish our approach to teacher development from others in the mathematics education literature. We show how a way of working that develops expertise runs through all mathematics education courses at the University of Bristol, and distil key principles for running collaborative groups of teachers. We exemplify these principles further through analysis of one group that met over 2 years as part of a research project focused on the work of Gattegno. We provide evidence for the effectiveness of the group in terms of teacher development. We conclude by arguing that the way of working in this group cannot be separated from the history of interaction of participants.