Pergamon Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol. 13, No. 5, pp. 529 539, 1997 © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0742-051X/97 $17.00 + 0.00 PII: S0742-051 X(96)00001-2 USING A RESEARCH SIMULATION TO CHALLENGE PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS' BELIEFS ABOUT MATHEMATICS SANDRA SCHUCK University of Technology, Sydney, Lindfield, Australia Abstraet--A cohort of first year prospectiveprimary school teachers became aware of the affective aspects of learning mathematics through a research simulation. The students posed questions about issues that they saw as problematic in mathematics education and then participated in inter- views in which they acted as researchers and respondents. The research simulation continued, in that students enacted other roles typical of researchers, such as disseminating the results of their research to the community. Using a research simulation encouraged beliefs to become explicit and promoted opportunity for reflection about the implication of those beliefs for prospective primary school teachers of mathematics. © 1997 ElsevierScience Ltd Introduction This paper reports on an investigation of prospective teachers' learning about teaching and learning of mathematics through the use of a research simulation. It begins by discussing some of the literature concerning prospective primary school teachers' views on learning and teaching, and concerning the goals and direc- tions of teacher education courses. A rationale for using a research simulation in teacher education courses is then developed. Finally a discussion of the way in which a research simu- lation was used with first year students at an Australian university is described and discussed. For the last two decades at least, ideas about reform in mathematics have been debated and numerous attempts to implement reform have occurred. Policy documents, such as the Cockcroft Report (Cockcroft, 1982) in the United Kingdom, the U.S.A.'s "Standards documents," Curriculum and Evaluation Stan- dards for School Mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989) and Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1991), and Australia's National Statement on School Mathematics (1991), share a vision of mathematics in which the affective component is seen as being of major importance in the learning and teaching of mathematics. All these documents also high- light the requirement for the power of mathe- matics to be made more accessible to all members of the community. This vision requires the reform of mathematics education from the teaching of what could be called a mathematics for an elite, a mathematics that is viewed as objective, universal and unchan- ging (Burton, 1996) to the teaching of mathe- matics that is fallible, dynamic and accessible to all people. Fennema, Carpenter, & Peterson (1989) relate how prior to the reform vision, the picture of "good teaching" stemmed from a view of mathematics that stressed the gaining of a body of skills through drill and practice. Students were found to be relatively successful at performing low order computation but seemed to be far less successful at higher order cognitive skills such as problem solving. As advances in technology led to a lesser demand for computational skills and to a greater need for conceptual understanding and problem solving skills, the 1980s and 1990s saw an overwhelming belief that great change 529