There is substantial evidence that teachers' beliefs about mathematics impact their teaching of mathematics. Given this evidence, it is appropriate that teacher education programs assess their effectiveness, at least in part, on how well they nurture beliefs that are consistent with their philosophy of learning and teaching. To explore this perspective a study was conducted with preservice elementary teachers participating in an alternative certification program for teaching in an urban setting. Students were required to take 6 hours of mathematics and 6 hours of mathematics education taught as a seamless course over three semesters. Before and after the program students completed a Mathematics Belief Instrument. Descriptive statistics were used to study trends across the group (n=14). Higher mean scores were found in all three parts of the post survey. Qualitative data were collected over the year in the form of weekly teaching logs. Results suggest that the program was successful in changing preservice teacher beliefs.

This study investigated the mathematics beliefs and content knowledge of 103 elementary pre‐service teachers in a developmental teacher preparation program that included a two course mathematics methods sequence. Pre‐service teachers' pedagogical beliefs became more cognitively‐oriented during the teacher preparation program with these changes occurring during the two methods courses. Pedagogical beliefs remained stable during student teaching. The pre‐service teachers also significantly increased their personal efficacy for teaching mathematics throughout the program with these shifts occurring across both methods courses and into student teaching. Pedagogical beliefs and teaching efficacy beliefs were not related at the beginning of the program, but, in general, were positively related throughout the program. In addition, the pre‐service teachers' pedagogical beliefs were positively related to their specialized content knowledge for teaching mathematics at the end of the program.

This mixed methods examination of 710 research articles in mathematics education published in six prominent educational journals during the period 1995-2005 finds that 50% of the studies used qualitative methods only, 21% used quantitative methods only, and 29% mixed qualitative and quantitative methods in various ways. Although the number of mixed methods articles show some variation year to year and journal to journal, there is no discernible trend in the aggregate across this time period for the collection of journals studied. Issues explored include defining research categories and subsequently categorizing studies, balance and dominance between quantitative and qualitative strands, and integration within conclusions.

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