234 Sinikka Kaartinen and Timo Latomaa
culturally organized activities and the development of their pedagogical thinking. The need
for large-scale educational reform is currently being discussed (Kwakman, 2003; Sfard, 2001)
at all levels of education. New skills addressing social and technological competencies are
being embedded into curricula alongside traditional domain specific understanding
(Kwakman, 2003), but we lack, however, research-based evidence of teachers‘ readiness to
fulfill their new role as facilitators of students‘ learning processes for life-long learning. The
sufficiency of traditional professional development activities such as attending courses,
training, conferences and reading professional journals to refresh and update teachers‘
pedagogical approaches has been widely debated (Bransford et al., 1999; Darling-Hammond,
1998). Despite recognition of the limitations of the traditional sphere of professional
knowledge, teachers lack the necessary support and tools to modernize their pedagogical
thinking. This paper applies the concept of a ―community of learners‖ (Rogoff, Matusov and
White, 1996) for enhancing teachers‘ readiness to respond to the challenges that modern
society poses for mathematics education. The theoretical stance of a community-of-learners
approach highlights transformation of participation in a collaborative endeavour (Goos,
Galbright and Renshaw, 1999). In this process, the participants build on each other‘s
initiations and develop a joint solution for the problem. Therefore the focus of this chapter is
to investigate how mathematics teachers negotiate their role in joint problem solving. Specific
attention will be paid to the adopted stance during problem-solving and the nature of
participation in the communicative activity.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
In recent years cognitively-oriented approaches to education have been challenged by
sociocultural theories. The former have approached learning as an acquisition process which
takes place as a result of the individual‘s active reconstruction of domain specific knowledge.
Since the acquisition approach conceptualizes knowledge as a kind of property that can be
transmitted, the goal of learning is seen as the individual enrichment of domain specific
concepts and procedures (cf. Sfard, 1998).
The sociocultural learning theories approach learning by examining teacher learning in its
culturally situated context (Cole, 1996; Vygotsky, 1962; 1978; Wertsch, 1991; Wertsch, del
Rio, and Alvarez, 1995) and hence, define the learner as a cultural and historical subject
embedded within, and constituted by, a network of social relationships and interactions.
Learning and development, then, is explained by the changing nature of these relationships
and types of participation in cultural activities (Goos, Galbraith, and Renshaw, 1999). From
this perspective, teacher learning can be seen as an open-ended process with the possibility of
diverse ways of acting, feeling and thinking (Renshaw and Brown, 1998). See also Kaartinen
and Kumpulainen, 2001.
2.1. Collaborative Activity Mediated by Sign Vehicles
The roots of sociocultural theories for learning and development lie in the cultural
historical tradition of Soviet psychologist Vygotsky (1962; 1978). Parallel to the development