What Do Secondary Preservice Mathematics Teachers Need to Know? Content Courses Connecting Secondary and Tertiary Mathematics

Abstract

T he recently released report The Mathematical Education of Teachers II (MET-II) [Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS), 2012] notes that, while most secondary mathematics teachers major in mathematics, many of the courses taken focus on mathematics needed for graduate study or careers in business. Prospective mathematics teachers could be better served by courses that “provide opportunities for future teachers to learn the mathematics they need to know to be wellprepared beginning teachers who will continue to learn new mathematical content and deepen their understanding of familiar topics” [CBMS, 2012, p. 5]. At present we appear to be in an exciting period of innovation and experimentation in the development of such courses, as mathematicians with interest in secondary education have created a wide array of new courses designed specifically for mathematics majors studying to become teachers. Teacher education programs include a variety of courses designed to improve teachers’ knowledge. These courses fall largely into two categories: mathematics courses offered by mathematics departments and teaching methods courses offered by education departments. Many teaching methods courses have begun to incorporate content knowledge, especially as it relates to the mathematics prospective teachers will teach and the specialized mathematical knowledge needed for the specific tasks of teaching [Ball, Thames, and Phelps, 2008]. Yet there does not appear to have been substantial change in the types of mathematics content courses that prospective teachers (as mathematics majors) take, with one exception. There are a growing number of courses offered by mathematics departments where prospective teachers learn new mathematics while simultaneously building connections between tertiary and secondary mathematics. These connections courses are presumed to help prospective secondary mathematics teachers (PSMT) situate and motivate the mathematics that they will teach. The impetus for the increasing number of connections courses has come about for at least two reasons. First, research over the past twenty-plus years has articulated the need for such knowledge, expanded our thinking about what mathematics teachers need to know, and pushed us to think about how this knowledge develops. Second, we see an increasing number of productive and sustained collaborations between mathematicians and mathematics educators, such that many in the Eileen Murray is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University in the Graduate School of Education. Her email address is eileen_murray@harvard.edu.