Integrating mathematical literacy toward mathematics teaching: the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of prospective math teacher in designing the learning task

Abstract

To integrate mathematical literacy to Mathematics teaching, a learning task should be designed to activate students’ involvement in gaining the learning experiences and the learning objectives. Therefore, teachers need to possess the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) as the integration of pedagogical knowledge, mathematics and mathematical literacy teaching methodology, knowledge about mathematics and mathematical literacy. The purpose of this research is to describe the prospective mathematics teacher’s PCK in designing a learning task to integrate mathematical literacy in a math class. One of 157 prospective math teachers who was at least on 5th semester was selected as the subject. There were three selection criteria for the subject: pedagogical knowledge, mathematical knowledge and mathematical literacy. The subject was assigned to design the learning task within 3 weeks. In order to get the profile of his PCK, the subject was interviewed on the basis of the design that he produced. The results of this study shows that the subject had a good PCK which he utilized for designing learning task. He utilized two approached of organizing learning task, i.e.presenting a mathematics problem to teach the mathematics concept followed by presenting mathematical literacy problems to give a deeper understanding of concepts or vice versa.