Subject Matter Knowledge of Geometry Needed in Tasks of Teaching: Relationship to Prior Geometry Teaching Experience

Abstract

This study proposes task of teaching as an organizer of dimensionality in teachers’ subject matter knowledge for teaching (SMK) and investigates it in the context of measuring SMK for teaching high school geometry (SMK-G). We hypothesize that teachers use different SMK-G in different aspects of their teaching work and that such differences can be scaled and associated with key elements of instruction. Analyses of 602 high school teachers’ responses to two sets of items designed to measure the SMK-G used in two particular tasks of teaching—understanding students’ work (USW) and choosing givens for a problem (CGP)—suggested the two scales of SMK-G to be distinguishable and differently related to experience in teaching high school geometry.