NCTCA 2021

This study investigates the interactive conversations in a Professional Learning Network (PLN) to understand its affordances. It used interpretive inquiry as the methodology and complexity thinking as the theoretical framework. One PLN was targeted to collect the archived data from which four blog posts and their comments were selected as illustrative examples. The results presented the diverse conversation structures through conversation weaving and conversation expanding as well as the multiple types of knowing emergent from the conversations including: mathematics-for-teaching, beliefs about teaching, social relationships, blog resources, and recounting experiences. The knowing of mathematics-for-teaching was enacted in the moments of mathematics teachers’ participation in the conversations. The other four types of knowing were implicated with the emergence of mathematics-for-teaching, the teachers’ participation in the PLN, and the evolvement of the PLN itself. However, they have not yet been explored in the predominant research on teachers’ disciplinary knowledge of mathematics.