In MiC, the teacher is a facilitator and guide in the teaching/learning process. The center of knowledge moves from the teacher to the students. The teacher invites students to become involved in the problems, to struggle with a variety of approaches, and to learn at their own pace. Rather than "teaching as telling," teaching becomes posing questions, discussing problems, and summarizing the mathematics.

  Because students are invited to participate, rather than just be told, they are stimulated to respond creatively, to develop mathematics that is significant to them. Students bring to the classroom their own culture and should be encouraged to operate within that culture as they reinvent mathematical processes. The construction of mathematical knowledge is promoted by the problems, guided by the teacher, and carried out through discourse among students. The teacher asks questions to stimulate inventive thinking, makes connections when necessary, and helps students summarize and organize their knowledge.

  There are often different ways to solve a problem, rather than a single strategy, or even a single answer. Mathematics in Context recognizes that students come to each unit with prior knowledge and that they should be encouraged to solve problems in their own way, by using their own strategy, and at their own level of sophistication. When discussing a problem, the teacher should consider all of the strategies used by students and help students compare their techniques. This interaction of students, teacher, and diverse strategies is an essential element in classroom dynamics. Knowing what strategies students use enables the teacher to orient instruction in such a way that students can progress to new and deeper understanding of the mathematics.