Section archive - Preservice Teachers

It is generally assumed that in order to teach mathematics effectively, middle years teachers ought to have a high degree of knowledge of mathematics and confidence in their ability to do the mathematics as well as self-efficacy to teach it. This study examines the content knowledge, mathematics confidence and self-efficacy of 99 graduate-entry pre-service teachers in an Australian school of education. The findings indicate that, in general, their mathematical content knowledge was not strong. Further, the participants expressed different levels of confidence and self-efficacy for specific concepts, so, while the scale used had high Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, its internal consistency was relatively weak. That is, confidence and self-efficacy were found to be content specific. Further, the participants tended to have confidence and self-efficacy scores that, while low, were inconsistent with their ability to do the mathematics; they tended to overestimate their mathematics competency. The findings with respect to pre-service teachers’ deficit of relevant mathematical knowledge, confidence and self-efficacy have implications for teacher preparation to teach mathematics in the study institution and potentially more broadly in the West.

This qualitative study sought to understand the reasoning of pre-service teachers through think-aloud interviews with teacher education students at the beginning of their postgraduate degree (six elementary and six secondary). Interviews focused on contextualised and challenging teaching scenarios with a range of response options previously confirmed through the use of situational judgement test (SJT) methodology. The authors’ three-step analysis revealed seven concepts that highlighted the motivations and beliefs underlying the reasoning of pre-service teachers. Practical implications include professional development around decision-making during teacher education programs. Future research will explore the use of SJTs in developing key non-academic attributes for effective teaching.

This study addresses how teacher candidates committed to a social-justice-oriented urban teacher residency programme articulate and reflect why they want to be teachers in high-need public schools and what they expect from teaching so as to ascertain what they expect to do. The participants of this study included 77 graduates who participated in four cohorts of an urban teacher residency programme from 2010 through 2014. Employing a qualitative case study design, the authors analysed 77 sets of admissions essays, which were completed as part of the residency application process. Building on their analysis of candidates’ admissions essays through inductive coding, the authors find that candidates’ reflections on why they want to be teachers in high-need public schools and what they expect to do, stem from their beliefs in their role as a teacher and their beliefs about the role of education. Such reflections are grounded in beliefs of teacher activism, pupil activism, and advocacy for pupils who have been marginalised due to systemic inequalities. The study illuminates committed teachers’ reasons for entering the teaching profession so as to inform better recruitment strategies, and has implications for how initial teacher education (ITE) programmes could specifically improve their professional preparation and practices to recruit and retain qualified teachers who intend to stay.

The present study examines future teachers’ motivations for teaching using the FIT-Choice (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice) scale. The focus thereby is on subject interest, a factor that has rarely been accounted for by FIT-Choice studies although it is considered one of the most important factors to students for choosing teaching as a career. It is also assumed that students of different subject domains belong to different subcultures and therefore differ in their motivations. On the basis of n = 386 first-year, Bachelor students qualifying for lower and upper secondary schools from a large university in Germany, a latent confirmatory factor analysis shows that the FIT-Choice scale structure could be replicated and subject-specific interest was rated the most important factor by pre-service teachers. Latent path analyses reveal that students from different subject domains differ slightly in their motivations. More importantly, students who value their studied subjects’ importance highly also show higher intrinsic, social-altruistic, and pedagogical motivations.