Abstract
Although the knowledge required by mathematics teacher educators is a relatively recent area of research, there has been significant progress in the field over the last few years. The classic distinction of a teacher’s knowledge into content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge prompts us to reflect in this regard on what should constitute the content of primary teacher education programmes, and how the educator might mediate this content to make it accessible to their prospective teachers. This paper aims to contribute to this progress through a study into the work of Lucas, a teacher educator, during the course of a training session with prospective primary teachers. Critical observation of the video recording brought to the fore salient teaching situations on the topic of symmetry, which led us to explore the pedagogical content knowledge deployed in the session through a guided interview with the educator. Analysis of extracts from this interview enabled us to identify three main categories of this PCK: knowledge about how to teach programme content; knowledge about the characteristics of prospective primary teachers’ learning; and knowledge about the standards and norms of primary teacher education programmes.
Highlights
Despite recent advances in research into the knowledge of mathematics teacher educators, there is little consensus about what kind of knowledge is appropriate to the profession [1]
Consistent with the foregoing review of research into the content of initial teacher education and the nature of the educator’s knowledge of this content, in this study we focus on answering the question: which indicators of pedagogical content knowledge can be identified in the course of a class on symmetry with a group of prospective primary teachers (PPTs)? The aim of the study is to explore the knowledge that enables the educator to deal with a previously studied content item, and so provide evidence for a range of elements that we consider to constitute his pedagogical knowledge
When these elements were classified into the general categories into which we divided such knowledge, we could see three types: knowledge of how to teach programme content, knowledge of the characteristics of the PPTs’ learning, and knowledge of the standards and norms of primary teacher education programmes
Summary
Despite recent advances in research into the knowledge of mathematics teacher educators, there is little consensus about what kind of knowledge is appropriate to the profession [1]. The teacher’s knowledge can be considered as subsumed within the educator’s knowledge, albeit each nuanced in terms of their particular purposes and utility [4] From this perspective, the difference lies in the observation that while the teacher uses this knowledge as a tool, largely implicitly, in planning their mathematics teaching, the educator is required to have the ability to mediate this same knowledge in such a way as to facilitate its construction within the minds of the prospective teachers. The educator’s knowledge involved in the tandem “to think like a teacher” and “to know like a teacher” can usefully be explored in specific models of teachers’ knowledge (e.g., MTSK [7]), yet the question remains about which elements of the educator’s knowledge are deployed in teaching PPTs “to feel like a teacher” and “to act like a teacher” Evidence of these facets of the teacher education programme content, structured as, can be consulted in previous studies by the authors [16] Evidence of these facets of the teacher education programme content, structured as in Figure 1, can be consulted in previous studies by the authors [16]
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