Mathematics teacher typologies or nationally located patterns of behaviour?

This paper reports on a small-scale EU-funded study of the teaching of mathematics in the age range 10–14 in Flanders, England, Hungary, and Spain. Drawing on video recordings of sequences of lessons taught on standard topics, and exploiting a coding schedule developed from live observations in each country, the inferable learning objectives of, and the didactic strategies teachers employ during, each of a lesson's episodes are examined. Two analyses were undertaken. The first, despite some common ground, indicated that teachers in each country behave in ways similar to teachers from the same country that distinguishes them from teachers elsewhere. The second identified typologies of teacher behaviour that were international in their teacher composition and challenged the robustness of the national script.