Pre-service Primary Teachers’ Teaching Styles and Attitudes towards the Use of Technology in Mathematics Classrooms

Eddie M Mulenga,José M Marbán

doi:10.29333/iejme/5649

Abstract

The integration of ICT in formal teaching and learning environments has become more and more relevant along the last decades. However, its use in the mathematics classroom seems to be still far from initial expectations. This paper shows the results from a research conducted to get some insight about such a gap by analyzing the relationship between pre-service primary teachers’ teaching styles in teaching and learning mathematics and their attitudes towards the use of technology in mathematics classrooms. Analysis of Variances and step-wise multiple regression analysis were performed over the data provided by one hundred and sixty three participants by completing survey questionnaires. The results indicate that pre-service teachers’ year of study has no significant impact on the integration of ICT in the teaching and learning of mathematics while teaching styles and gender do have. Furthermore, age, gender and teaching styles are capable predictors for the construction of the regression model and it is deduced that teaching styles have a predictive ability on the integration of ICT in mathematics classrooms.

Highlights

For many years educators have been exploring different strategies and approaches to improve the quality of education and to improve overall learning processes
The adjusted R square column indicates that about 9% of total variability in the dependent variable that is, the pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards the use of information and communication technology (ICT) is explained by the facilitator teaching style, 13% of total variability is explained by two predictor independent variables (IVs) gender and the facilitator teaching style, 15% is explained by three IVs facilitator, gender and age of the students
The results presented in the previous section indicate that pre-service teachers’ year of study has no significant impact on the integration of ICT in the teaching and learning of mathematics while teaching styles and gender do have

Summary

Introduction

For many years educators have been exploring different strategies and approaches to improve the quality of education and to improve overall learning processes. Many facets have been analyzed in the context of mathematics education such as student achievement, parental involvement, learning conditions, teacher training, school curriculum and standardized testing, among others, it seems that more attention is still required by some other factors such as the affective domain in mathematics, the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in the mathematics classroom and the combined dynamics of learning and teaching styles. Teachers are categorized as novice, experienced and experts in their profession, what makes a teacher good, an expert or an excellent teacher is not yet clearly understood. Could it be specialized knowledge, teaching style, experience or perhaps level of education? Findings of their study revealed that intrinsic barriers are easy to surmount; once extrinsic barriers have been subdued successfully

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