The wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts: Employing cooperative learning in mathematics teachers' education

This paper presents a study on employing different types of cooperative learning (CL) settings in mathematics teacher education based on multiple research data. The study analyzes mechanisms in which CL contributes to the development of teacher knowledge of three kinds: subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular content knowledge. Additionally, it reflects on interactions between different kinds of teachers' knowledge in the process of development. Two wholes, which are greater than the sum of their parts, are analyzed in this paper. The first is a course whose design combines different CL settings, hence enhances different mechanisms for teachers' professional development. The second whole, teachers' "collaborative mind," is presented as an outcome of the first. To exemplify possible contributions of employing CL in teacher education, this paper first zooms in on the structure of one particular course for mathematics teachers and then focuses on one particular mathematical activity.