Chapter 8: Experiences Using Clinical Interviews in Mathematics Methods Courses to Empower Prospective Teachers: A Conversation Among Three Critical Mathematics Educators

We are three mathematics teacher educators (MTEs), operating at differing phases of our careers with differing levels of power and privilege, working closely with prospective teachers (PTs) across two universities and three departments. Through narrative vignettes and reflective conversation, we share our continual struggles in using the clinical interview as an activity in our mathematics methods courses. We grapple with what it means to prepare teachers who value and seek out students’ mathematical funds of knowledge through the experience of the clinical interview, and we contemplate the sociopolitical implications that arise from this work.

To illustrate our current thinking and continued wonderings, we share vignettes from our methods courses to show the different ways we justify and adapt the clinical interview. Our use of vignettes, or “narrative snippets that crystalize illustrative issues” (Graue & Walsh, 1998, p. 213), is purposeful; writing for us has become a part of the interpretive process, illustrative of our struggles as teacher educators operating from a sociopolitical theoretical perspective.