International Portal of Teacher Education
The online resource of academic content on teacher training and teacher education
Search results for: Mathematics instruction
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152 items
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In this paper, the authors report an enquiry into elementary preservice teachers’ learning, as they engage in doing mathematics for themselves.
As a group of researchers working in elementary Initial Teacher Education in English universities, they co-planned and taught sessions on growing pattern generalisation.
Following the sessions, interviews of fifteen preservice teachers at two universities focused on their expressed awareness of their approach to the mathematical activity.
Preservice teachers’ prospective planning and post-teaching evaluations of similar activities in their classrooms were also examined.
They draw on aspects of enactivism and the notion of reflective “spection” in the context of teacher learning, tracing threads between preservice teachers’ retro-spection of learning and pro-spection of teaching.
Their analysis indicates that increasing sensitivity to their own embodied processes of generalisation offers opportunities for novice teachers to respond deliberately, rather than to react impulsively, to different pedagogical possibilities.
The paper contributes a new dimension to the discussion about the focus of novice elementary school teachers’ retrospective reflection by examining how deliberate retrospective analysis of doing mathematics, and not only of teaching actions, can develop awarenesses that underlie the growth of expertise in mathematics teaching.
The authors argue that engaging preservice teachers in mathematics to support deliberate retrospective analysis of their mathematics learning and prospective consideration of the implications for teaching can enable more critical pedagogical choices.
Published: 2022
Updated: Jul. 18, 2022
2
The authors engaged preservice teachers in a redesigned mathematics field experience with a central focus on children’s reasoning through teaching experiments and purposeful reflection on practice through Lesson Study.
Indicators of effective teaching were examined through analysis of lesson plans and enactment, comparing student teachers who participated in the revised approach with student teachers in conventional forms of field experience.
Findings suggest that teaching aspects fostered by the revised approach during the field experience had a positive residual effect during student teaching.
Those who took part in teaching experiments and lesson study had lesson plans that provided for sense-making, encouraged collaboration, and included investigative mathematics to a greater degree than those in the conventional group.
Those in the revised group implemented lessons during student teaching that were more student-centered and considerate of classroom culture than those who took part in the conventional field experience.
We provide recommendations for designing field experiences.
Published: 2021
Updated: Oct. 20, 2021
3
This study investigates the insights and challenges that prospective teachers (PSTs) experience when exploring early algebraic reasoning.
The findings indicate that when PSTs engage in early algebra experiences during their preparation for teaching, they may experience meaningful new insights but may also face conceptual challenges.
The author also argues that the results suggest that PSTs may benefit from developing informal ways to represent algebraic expressions and equations.
Published: 2017
Updated: Jul. 15, 2018
4
This study aimed to examine whether different instructional practices could positively influence students’ anxieties and perceptions about mathematics. The authors compared between three instructional practices, which conducted to back on the same days in the same classroom (in-class lecture, flipped learning with teacher-created videos, flipped learning with Khan Academy videos). The findings suggest that when comparing the multiple aspects of teaching and learning for a mathematics content course for elementary education preservice teachers, flipped learning with teacher-created videos has the potential to help improve students’ anxieties and confidence in mathematics more than do instruction that incorporates in-class lectures or third-party videos.
Published: 2017
Updated: Jul. 12, 2018
5
This study focused on how elementary teachers described their professional growth after being involved in lesson study in a professional learning community with other teachers and university professors. The study also examined how they described the impact the program had on their teaching of mathematics. The results indicated that the participants valued the collaboration within the community of learners. The sharing of ideas, planning lessons together, and reflecting on teaching and student learning in a supportive environment appears to have been critical to teacher growth. The authors conclude that the findings indicate that while involvement in professional development to deepen teachers’ understanding of mathematics and their knowledge of how to teach mathematics is important.
Published: 2016
Updated: Feb. 18, 2018
6
This study aimed to examine the preservice teachers’ reflections on the contingent situations of a microteaching experience based on exploratory talk, in order to better understand preservice teachers’ emerging awareness of teaching and learning in mathematics. The findings suggest that the experience had impacted on the preservice teachers’ professional development in some ways. All the participants seemed to have valued the experience, and so may have been sensitised to work with their students in an informed way. However, some preservice teachers said that the experience had changed their beliefs in using talk as a teaching approach; and even that the experience had changed the way they wanted to teach mathematics. Others argued that the experience had raised awareness of the difficulties in working this way.
Published: 2018
Updated: Feb. 13, 2018
7
In this article, the authors examined the potential impact of video excerpts of teaching on pre-service teachers' learning. They were also interested to identify and focus on the development of students' understanding of mathematics and the teaching and learning actions likely to facilitate this. The authors found that many of the pre-service teachers were interested in the development of students' understanding. However, many of the participants struggled to identify evidence of it or observable teaching actions likely to contribute to it.
Published: 2013
Updated: Oct. 17, 2017
8
The current study examines the challenges that students experience in the consolidation of knowledge in mathematics and education. The findings reveal that the epistemological beliefs of the three students differed between the two disciplines. The authors argue that all the students tended to regard mathematical knowledge as certain and coherent in nature. In education, however, they relied more on personal opinions and experiences as sources and justifications of knowledge. They also identify six main areas that can challenge the consolidation of mathematical and pedagogical knowledge.
Published: 2015
Updated: Sep. 13, 2017
9
This study aimed to offer a group of preservice teachers with opportunities to learn about interdisciplinary mathematics pedagogy, plus the experience of implementing interdisciplinary mathematics pedagogy with elementary students. This study situated music within a series of mathematics lessons that incorporated the musical elements as a central, rather than superficial, component of the mathematics pedagogy. This study has provided empirical findings pertaining to the connections between music and mathematics to illustrate the concept of the entertainment-education learning strategy. To support the aim of improving preservice teachers’ knowledge for how to effectively implement mathematics teaching strategies with their future elementary students, teacher educators should strive to improve preservice teachers’ awareness of, and capacity for, making mathematics education more engaging for students.
Published: 2016
Updated: Aug. 08, 2017
10
This article explores effective mathematics teaching as constructed in Finnish and Swedish teacher educators’ discourses. Teacher educators in both countries bring into play a variety of aspects identified in the field of mathematics education research, when talking about good mathematics teachers/teaching. The teachers often talk about the same general categories, but a deeper analysis reveals a substantial difference between the characters of the discourses concerning how most of these categories are conceptualized.
Published: 2015
Updated: Jul. 04, 2017