Learning to Teach Basic School Mathematics: Lessons from a Pedagogical Course

Abstract

This is an empirical study designed to investigate the ideas pre-service elementary teachers bring into a mathematics pedagogy course, how these ideas change over the course of the semester and find out what the sources of the changes are. The study involved ten pre-service elementary teachers in one pedagogical course in mathematics offered at a Midwestern University in the United States of America in 2003. Analyses of data revealed that on the whole very small things changed. Specifically, while some participants still maintained static and more prescriptive views of mathematics and the teaching of mathematics, others showed slight movement toward socio-constructive ideas of teaching. The sources of these changes ranged from more techniques from their field placements to interaction with peers in course discussions. Relying on available literature on ways of challenging the wrong views pre-services teachers bring to their coursework from the long years in school as students, recommendations have been made about the need to consider using multimedia systems to help pre-service teachers learn to teach in a reflective and critical manner. Keywords : pre-service teachers, mathematics pedagogy course, views of nature of mathematics, views of teaching of mathematics