Pre-Service Elementary Teachers’ Knowledge of Students: The Case of Subtraction

Abstract Introduction: Although there is ambiguity about the elements of teacher knowledge, all researchers accept that being able to anticipate what errors can be made, the reasons for and the strategies to overcome these errors, in short, the knowledge of students is important for student achievement. In this study, knowledge of students refers to being aware of students’ possible errors and underlying reasons for these errors and knowing how to overcome these errors. Based on this consideration, the purpose of this study is to investigate pre-service elementary teachers’ knowledge of students on the subtraction topic. Methods: Considering the purpose, the data were collected from 118 pre-service elementary teachers who were enrolled in a four-year Elementary Teacher Education program via a task-based questionnaire related to the topic of subtraction and semi-structured interviews following the questionnaire. The task-based questionnaire included three completed incorrect subtraction tasks and was prepared considering the related literature and the elementary school mathematics curriculum of Turkey. Each task in the questionnaire contained a different type of error. The pre-service elementary teachers’ answers to the task-based questionnaire were categorized as correct, partially correct, wrong, or no answer by means of categorical analysis. The pre-service elementary teachers who gave correct and partially correct answers to the tasks were asked to participate in the second part of the study to learn their possible strategies to overcome the errors made in the tasks. Results: As a result of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the pre-service elementary teachers’ responses, it was found that their knowledge of students for subtraction is limited. Specifically, although the pre-service elementary teachers were partially able to identify the errors in the first and second task, they were not able to identify the error in the third task. Furthermore, they were better able to determine a more commonly occurring subtraction error compared to the uncommon ones. The pre-service elementary teachers could not identify the underlying reasons that led the students to the errors. They could not explain what conceptual knowledge related to the topic of subtraction the student lacked that resulted in the errors. As the pre-service teachers did not attain these reasons, they were not able to provide strategies to overcome these errors different than restating the rules or procedures to overcome students’ errors. Discussion: Only being able to identify the errors is not enough to make the instruction effective. Teachers also need to know and provide a rationale for why the errors happen and how to overcome them (Even & Tirosh, 1995). Contrary to this statement, the pre-service elementary teachers in this study could not attempt to understand the students’ thinking or could not explain the reasons behind students’ errors with the notion of subtraction. Son (2013) emphasizes that pre-service teachers tend to explain the reasons for students’ errors as procedural. Similar to this emphasis, the pre-service teachers identified the errors as resulting from not applying procedures carefully or not enough knowing algorithms to find correct solutions. However, without addressing the reasons or focusing on procedures does not promote students’ understanding of the related topic (An, Kulm, & Wu, 2004). The pre-service teachers’ difficulties in identifying the possible conceptual reasons may result from deficits in knowledge of students (Fennema & Franke, 1992; Ball et al., 2008). Limitations: The findings were limited with the responses of the pre-service elementary teachers participating in this study. Moreover, the pre-service elementary teachers’ knowledge of students was investigated within the scope of subtraction. Conclusions: Although the pre-service elementary teachers could identify students’ errors on subtraction, they had difficulty in identifying the reasons and suggesting strategies to overcome the errors. Therefore, it can be concluded that the pre-service teachers’ knowledge of students for the topic of subtraction is limited. An implication of this is that teacher educators need to include error-analysis tasks to help pre-service teachers be aware of the importance of their knowledge of students.