Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

impressive, all the notes, worksheets, preps and everything we did in the
workshops. In fact other people are coming to me for things (laughs). I won't
say I know everything in the file, but for next year, I'll be much better off.
There's so many things that you don't take notice of in business and
commerce, but I now, I see examples everywhere, like in banks, shops,
adverts, sports, even funerals (laughs). It's all business you know. Like we
said in the workshops, look for the cycle, look for the cycle!
Significant here is that other teachers in her school were beginning to access her resource
file. This was a marked change from her initial interview in which she commented "I
can't keep running to other teachers". She conceded that she did not have a full
understanding ofeverything in her file, but went on to explain how she was able to relate
daily experiences to commerce. Ofparticular significance was her reference to the
economic cycle and her ability to see its workings in daily commercial activities. Here we
see distinct evidence of Shirley's changed understanding ofthe EMS learning area. In his
model for the classification ofmathematics discourse Dowling (1998) introduced the
concept of 'mathematical gaze'. He argued that ifa person acquired proficiency in the
esoteric domain (that is, an understanding ofmathematical principles at a highly abstract
level), then such an individual was likely to begin to observe mathematics in everyday
life. A similar phenomenon was reported by Graven (2002) where some teachers in her
study had developed a mathematical gaze as a result oflearning in a community of
practice. With regard to Shirley, while one can argue that she had begun to develop an
economic perspective that allowed her to make strong links between economic theory and
concepts that she had learnt and the environment, she had not attained a level of
competence in the disciplines ofeconomics or management to warrant describing her
behaviour in terms ofthe concept 'gaze' as espoused by Dowling (Dowling 1998). She
had however, shifted beyond 'everyday understandings' of economic phenomena towards
a 'developing understanding' ofthe EMS learning area. While Shirley appeared modest
and guarded about her understanding ofthe EMS learning area, my sense was that she
had certainly shifted from an initial position ofa 'very weak understanding' ofthe EMS
learning area towards a position of 'developing understanding'..
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