Strengthening pre-service teachers’ mathematical content knowledge

Abstract

The tertiary training of pre-service teachers is pivotal in their professional preparation and formation as qualified educators. Multiple authors posit that teachers require a development of pedagogical content knowledge, or knowing a variety of ways to present mathematical content and to assist students to deepen their understanding (Chick 2012; Shulman 1987). Emerick, Hirsch & Berry (2003) argue that high quality teachers must possess appropriate mathematical content knowledge, and must also possess considerable background in communicating effectively to students. There are two aims of this educational research. The first is to investigate the self-perceptions of pre-service primary and secondary teachers enrolled in a mathematics education unit as they engage with and consolidate their mathematics content knowledge. The second aim is to explore how these pre-service teachers understand and perceive their ‘readiness’ to undertake such a task, based on their recent tertiary training. Data were collected from participants through the exercise of pre-unit (Phase 1) and post-unit (Phase 2) surveys. Following the completion of Phase 1, participant self-reflections indicated varying degrees of readiness to teach mathematics to upper primary and lower secondary students. Less than half of the sampled participants asserted that they felt confident in teaching mathematics, and almost all participants stressed the need to strengthen both their content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. This paper will discuss the key findings of Phase 1 in light of the extant literature on the preparation of pre-service mathematics teachers.

Assessing Factors Influencing Pre-Service Teachers’ Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) Mathematics in Ghanaian Basic Schools

“…This confirms the inadequacy of MKT of pre-service teachers as reported by researchers in the West [56,57,58,59,60,61]. The increase in predictive power of MKT for increased alignment of high performance in mathematics in the basic school supports the recommendation of researchers [31,56] who use the term mathematical content for teaching, and conforms to the recommendations of authors [62,63] that prospective programs need to account for the weak mathematics knowledge of substantial portions of pre-service teachers.…”

The Development and Validation Prospective Mathematics Teachers Holistic Assessment Tools

“…Empirically, this measurement model carries the following dimensions: knowledge of pedagogical content related to how teachers understand and manage learning in the classroom [62][63][64]. Mathematics teachers must know and understand mathematical content related to mathematical material [65][66][67], teachers' positive behavior in interacting with their environment [68][69][70], and teacher spirit or spirit if teachers dedicate themselves to learning [7,8,39].…”

Expressive writing interventions for pre-service teachers’ mathematics anxiety

“…The issues raised above were drawn from research published in 2001, 2009, and more recently in 2015 (Hine, 2015); all revealing that pre-service teachers have continued to struggle with mathematics. Unfortunately, little is written in this field undoubtedly for many reasons, one of which may be because it is difficult for pre-service teachers to self-report low competency in mathematics given that they should be highly competent in mathematics to be effective teachers (Wu, 2009).…”

“…Both of these dimensions can hinder an individual's ability to perform a mathematical task or computation, which in the case of pre-service teachers, can affect their ability to learn mathematical content knowledge which precedes learning about the pedagogical approaches to teaching mathematics (Thames & Ball, 2010). Basically, teachers must be competent in mathematics content before they learn mathematics pedagogy (Ball et al, 2008;Hine, 2015;Senk et al, 2012).…”