Examining How Prospective Mathematics Teachers’ Instructional Visions Align with Their Responding Practices Through Scripting Tasks

Abstract

In this qualitative study, we examined how prospective mathematics teachers’ instructional visions align with their instructional practices through an approximation of practice opportunity. Namely, we employed scripting tasks to understand how prospective teachers complete a scripting task and respond to students’ misconceptions, and we compared their instructional visions with their responding practices. The 81 prospective mathematics teachers who were taking the “Misconceptions in Mathematics Teaching” course at two different state universities comprised the participants. Data was obtained from the instructional vision questionnaire and two scripting tasks in fractions. We analyzed the data using the content analysis technique. Our findings indicate that the majority of the participants’ instructional visions were aligned with ambitious instruction, while their responding practices were mostly inconsistent with their visions. Our findings suggest that while their instructional visions were highly reform based, prospective mathematics teachers still need to be oriented in an ambitious instructional direction in their practices.