Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education最新文献

This study interrogates how beginning secondary mathematics teachers align their beliefs with their practice when they justify their pedagogical choices in the context of recent English mathematics education policy which is strongly influenced by approaches to mathematics teaching in Shanghai and Singapore currently referred to as ‘mastery’ approaches. It seeks to understand beginning teachers’ perceptions and understandings of these approaches and the extent to which they recognise aspects of ‘mastery’ in practice. In setting the context, pre-service teachers’ beliefs were surveyed and found to be congruent with constructivist approaches to learning. We then draw on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews secondary mathematics teachers in their first year post-qualification. The interviews were designed to interrogate and capture understanding of the features of mastery within their own classrooms. By using vignettes to capture participants’ beliefs, our aim was to present a ‘more nuanced understanding of the phenomena’ (Skilling and Stylianides in Int J Res Method Educ 43(5):541–556, 2019, 10.1080/1743727x.2019.1704243). The analytical framework developed draws on Guskey’s (In: Wright J (ed) International encyclopedia of the social & behavioural sciences, 2015, vol 14, 2nd edn, Elsevier, pp 752–759) interpretation of Bloom’s theory of mastery learning together with features of mastery learning in mathematics articulated by Drury (How to teach mathematics for mastery, 2018, Oxford University Press) and Boylan et al. (Edu Sci 8(4):202, 2018, 10.3390/educsci8040202). This posed a research design challenge given the variation in interpretation of mastery learning as it is understood in practice. The data exposes differences in the interpretation of mastery approaches in the settings where they learn to teach, as well as the tensions that arise between beginning teachers’ beliefs, practice, professional knowledge and agency in their developing classroom roles.

This study investigated the development of prospective elementary teachers (PETs)’ subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge for teaching early algebra through participation in case discussions. PETs attended five weeks of intervention as part of a method course, which included case discussions. During the intervention, the participants were presented with big ideas of equivalence and equations, generalized arithmetic, and functional thinking as the content of early algebra through text-based classroom cases. Data were collected through one-hour individual interviews before and after the early algebra lessons. The analysis of the pre-interviews indicated that prospective elementary teachers may not be ready to foster algebraic thinking in elementary grades in terms of the required knowledge for teaching. We found that PETs needed more development of required subject matter knowledge to guide algebraic thinking in elementary grades, such as the relational meaning of the equal sign, generalizing, representing, or justifying arithmetic or functional relationships, and reasoning with them. Likewise, PETs were found to lack in pedagogical content knowledge related to students’ conceptions and misconceptions and effective teaching strategies to promote early algebraic thinking. However, we found that specifically designed method courses could help develop PETs’ knowledge of teaching early algebra. Following early algebra lessons centered around case discussions, PETs showed progress in multiple aspects of knowledge across all big ideas, though their improvement in generalized arithmetic was somewhat less pronounced. This progress was observed in their subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge.

Researchers in education have begun to address inclusivity for gender-diverse populations, but the authentic experiences of gender-variant students presented directly by the students themselves are largely unheard in the literature of mathematics education. In this co-authored report, we include the experiences of a genderqueer preservice mathematics teacher over the course of a semester at university through their autoethnography and the reflections of a mathematics teacher educator supervising the research. Through this study, we provide educators a window into some ways that gender-variant students may experience the classroom and academia. One goal of this research is to create a space for the authentic voice of gender-variant individuals in the discussion of gender-inclusive education. We highlight implications for mathematics teacher educators involving gender-variant students’ gender journeys as processes instead of moments of coming out, the interdependent process of building relationships of trust, and the importance of trying and failing and trying again as we seek to be more inclusive educators.

Teacher questioning serves a crucial role in creating classrooms where students’ mathematical reasoning is centered. Generally, why-questions are positioned as powerful tools to probe student thinking and engage students in mathematical argumentation. Yet, in our recent research we found that why-questions did not serve to differentiate traditional classrooms from those with a focus on justification and explanation. In this study, we investigated how linguistically similarly why-questions may operate differently. We leveraged disparate literature bases to frame the ambiguity of why-questions and analyzed a set of 61 lessons representing three school districts and spanning grades four through eight. We found that expected student responses to why-questions ranged from a recalled fact to rich justification depending on a number of contextual features. These differences in why-questions accounted for significant variation in student activity in lessons. We suggest that mathematics teacher educators similarly problematize why-questions in order to maximize their potential.

The sanctioned language around “mathematics teacher knowledge” in the US centers pedagogy, content (mathematical knowledge), and students. Yet, this teacher learning approach often promotes (explicitly or implicitly) teaching and learning of mathematics that operationalizes mathematics as rigid, as a gatekeeper, and only useful for global competition in STEM-related fields. These tacit capitalist goals result in teachers being expected to convey “clear and useful” mathematical information to students, not question why mathematics is being taught, who benefits, and/or how to intervene if the learning environment is harmful for students who are Black, Indigenous, students of Color, multilingual, dis/abled, queer, nonbinary, and/or of immigrant backgrounds. In this article, we build upon a form of relational knowing that intertwines mathematics, pedagogies, students, and politics called Political Conocimiento in Teaching Mathematics. Focusing on political knowledge brings the margins to the center by recognizing political issues cannot be separated from other dimensions or added on, as if politics are not already present in mathematics teaching and learning. As three women of Color, we present empirical results from three teacher education programs in the USA with teacher candidates (n = 55) who range in intersectional identities. Using scenario-based activities that support their development of political knowledge, we apply the lens of “The Mirror Test” to highlight how teacher candidates’ intersectional identities influenced the ethical identities they enacted. Some candidates focused more on “accountability” while others focused on “performativity.” We offer implications for future research on ethical identities in mathematics education with teachers and teacher candidates of various intersectional identities.

This study uses structural equation modeling to investigate the relationships between pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) course-taking history, beliefs about mathematics, beliefs about students’ mathematical ability, and opinions about (1) how student errors should be addressed when they occur and (2) how much emphasis should be given to various forms of assessment. The results indicate that some types of courses are strongly associated with beliefs about the nature of mathematics. Specifically, PSTs who have taken more mathematics courses are more likely to see mathematics as a set of rules. PSTs’ views about mathematics strongly predict their beliefs about who can do high-level mathematics, how they think student errors should be addressed, and which forms of assessment they think are most appropriate. Implications for teacher preparation programs are discussed.

This study was an examination of the fractional reasoning of elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) within the context of a dynamic digital environment known as Dynamic Ruler. Using an inductive content analysis approach, we administered four fraction-as-measure tasks to 142 PSTs and devised a comprehensive coding scheme to assess their fractional reasoning. The results showed that PSTs’ fractional reasoning could be categorized into five levels based on how they identified length units and coordinated the units. Notably, this study revealed that adjusting the size of the Dynamic Ruler through dragging could serve as a dynamic mediator, representing the conceptualization of fractions as a measure by identifying appropriate fractional units to measure a given length. We derived practical implications from our study to inform the design of mathematics pedagogy courses aimed at bolstering PSTs’ fractional reasoning.

Mathematics teacher education is often described in terms of the mathematical content and pedagogy that teachers need. However, recent calls for equity in mathematics education demand a broadening of this view. In this article, we articulate a theoretical description of what the role of being an advocate in language-diverse classrooms could involve and some of the practical challenges that mathematics teacher educators may have when introducing it, using empirical examples from our teacher education courses for teachers of Grades 1–7 in Norway. In the theoretical description of the role of being an advocate into mathematics teacher education, we distinguish between in-class advocacy and advocacy beyond the classroom and what these different kinds of advocacy might entail in language-diverse classrooms. The practical issues that we identified in raising different aspects of the role indicate the need for further research into how to raise preservice teachers’ awareness about the role of being an advocate, in and outside of the classroom, in different cultural settings and how this knowledge could be used in teacher education to challenge preservice teachers’ language ideologies and raise non-trivial issues.

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effects of two college-level mathematics courses on preservice elementary teachers’ mathematics anxiety and mathematics teaching self-efficacy beliefs. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental study was implemented on two college-level mandatory mathematics teaching methods courses that were specifically designed based on Bandura’s (1977) self-efficacy expectations theory. The findings of the study revealed a statistically significant difference between the beliefs of participants in the control and intervention groups for mathematics teaching self-efficacy after the intervention process, and a statistically significant change was found on the preservice elementary teachers’ mathematics anxiety and mathematics teaching self-efficacy beliefs within the intervention group. Moreover, qualitative exploration revealed the important aspects of this change as being pedagogical and emotional transformation, in which the intervention process helped the preservice teachers to develop a positive attitude and a better understanding towards mathematics and its teaching. Creation of discussions around preservice teachers’ previous mathematics related experiences and helping preservice teachers to succeed at challenging mathematical tasks could help teacher educators design more effective mathematics teaching courses on decreasing mathematics anxiety and increasing mathematics teaching self-efficacy.