Using Mathematics-Pedagogy Tasks to Facilitate the Professional Growth of Pre-service Elementary Teachers

Abstract

We used mathematics-pedagogy tasks (MPTs) to design content and methods (pedagogy) courses to facilitate the professional growth of pre-service elementary teachers, especially those who did not study in mathematics-related areas. MPTs, together with the use of relevant theories, enable pre-service elementary teachers to coordinate the learning of mathematics, student cognition, the sequence of mathematics content arranged in the curriculum, and teaching activities designed in textbooks. For those pre-service teachers studying in non-mathematics areas, the learning of mathematics should be the starting point, as it enables them not only to understand the mathematics but also to build personal learning theories that can subsequently be applied to realize student cognition. The integration of mathematics and student cognition becomes the foundation for pre-service elementary teachers to comprehend curriculum arrangement and textbook design. In this chapter, we discuss and exemplify the notion of MPTs using examples implemented in two teacher education courses (one content course and one methods course).