Bibliotherapy: a framework for understanding pre-service primary teachers' affective responses to learning and teaching mathematics

This paper advocates bibliotherapy as a powerful tool through which teacher educators can analyze and interpret the affective responses of pre-service primary teachers. Pre-service teachers analyzed readings about school students’ learning, and reflected on andreconstructed their understanding of their own school experiences. This process facilitateda meta-affective change that enabled the pre-service teachers to reconsider their assessmentof their capacity to learn and understand mathematics. We describe this change using thestages of bibliotherapy. This change enabled the pre-service teachers to approach their future teaching of mathematics with greater enthusiasm, and empowered them to constructpositive projective identities.