They say hindsight is 2020. Taking full advantage of this reflective clarity, we will discuss how my early mathematics teaching practice was characterized by a focus on the past-tense, and detail how attending to enactivist notions of cognition has allowed me to reify the practice of teaching mathematics into an activity that emerges in the present tense. By contrasting tenants typical of a past tense orientation to ones of a present tense orientation, we will aim to bring forth a conception of what it means to teach mathematics as a full participant in student sensemaking in the (ever-emerging) present tense.

Bio:

Nat Banting is a mathematics teacher and mathematics education lecturer on faculty in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He serves as a director of the Saskatchewan Mathematics Teachers’ Society (SMTS), and is a co-editor of its periodical, The Variable – a 2019 NCTM Affiliate Publication Award winner. Nat holds a Master of Education degree in Secondary Education from the University of Alberta, and is beginning his Ph.D. at the University of Saskatchewan in the Fall of 2020. His academic interests include the ecological and biological roots of cognition (particularly pertaining to the instigation and observation of student problem posing), the decision-making of teachers with(in) high-density mathematics classrooms, and student (and teacher) impressions of probability.

To watch a recording of this talk, click here: https://video-archive.fields.utoronto.ca/view/12048.