A Survey of Mathematics Pre-Service Teachers' End-of-Teaching Practice Reflections of Educational Contexts

Abstract

Pre-service teachers need to identify their understanding and beliefs about mathematics learning and teaching against the backdrop of the environment where, they teach during teaching practice. Pre-service teachers will one day be responsible for full-time teaching and their current reflections of educational contexts’ knowledge serve as a point of reference to their acquisition of teacher knowledge. Of the four knowledge bases for teaching, namely, pedagogy, pedagogical content knowledge, subject matter and educational contexts, the focus in this study was on the last. This study purposed to promote and describe mathematics pre-service teachers’ reflections of educational contexts at the end of a six-month teaching practice session. The 2022 cohort of 140 Bachelor of Education mathematics students participated in the study. The judgmental sampling technique was used to select 40 reflection reports. Moreover, four students were selected for interviews purposively based on their earlier reflections in the reports. The reflective reports and the interview transcriptions were analysed thematically through the lens of the Van Manen framework. The findings revealed that most of the pre-service teachers operated at the practical reflection level and very few attained the critical reflection stage. Student teachers took class preparation seriously, but they were disadvantaged by lack of teaching resources. They engaged themselves in many school duties, but this was only helpful if they were guided by experienced teachers. In response to some school management shortcomings, pre-service teachers projected wishes that could improve their teaching practices.