Mathematics for teaching: what makes us want to?

This chapter will explore the relationships between emotional engagement with mathematics over time and a desire to teach mathematics. The chapter will address, from an individuated perspective, these questions: Who becomes teachers of mathematics? Why do they/we? In the chapter I explore emotional elements from autobiographical accounts of mathematics graduates about to embark on teacher training, and set these alongside accounts from teachers of mathematics with non-traditional mathematics backgrounds. As a university teacher of mathematics education I have generally been interested in learning of what I have come to think of as 'mathematics for teaching'. In this chapter I draw on my experience as someone who prepares mathematics graduates to become specialist mathematics teachers, putting this alongside a group of people all having non-traditional qualifications who became teachers of mathematics, students making the transition from secondary teaching assistant to specialist teacher of secondary mathematics. Mathematics' becomes a critically defining contextual aspect for each group, and the 'for teaching' requires reconciliation betw