Prospective Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Perspectives and Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching

Abstract

Background:Previous research points to two different frameworks: Knowledge Quartet provided the field to assess the (prospective) teachers’ mathematical knowledge in teaching. Teacher perspectives framework contributed to the field to examine (prospective) teachers’ pedagogical principles underlying their mathematical knowledge in teaching. The field mostly focuses on what (prospective) mathematics teachers know and/or lack. Thus, there is need to investigate both what they know and why they know in terms of their mathematical knowledge in teaching.Materials and methods:Classroom teaching experiments (Cobb, 2000) was conducted for a total of eleven weeks during both a methods and the seminar part of a practice-teaching course. Data shown in this study included prospective teachers’ lesson plans, practice-teachings and self-reflection papers. All the lessons within the methods and practice teaching courses as well as the prospective teachers’ practice-teachings were videotaped and then transcribed. Prospective teachers wrote reflection papers after watching their videotaped lessons.Results:Results showed that prospective teachers holding a progressive incorporation perspective (PIP) had demonstrated all the codes in the Knowledge Quartet Framework during their practice-teaching.Conclusions:There is need to investigate coherency between other teacher perspectives and what they reveal in teaching in terms of their mathematical knowledge.