Prospective High School Teachers Research Articles

Designing Activities to Support Prospective High School Teachers’ Proofs of Congruence from a Transformation Perspective

Undergraduate mathematics instructors are called by many current standards to promote prospective teachers’ learning of geometry from a transformation perspective, marking a change from previous standards. The novelty of this situation means it is unclear what is involved in undergraduate learning and teaching of geometry from a transformation perspective. To approach this problem, we illustrate how specific in-class activities and design principles might help prospective teachers make conceptual links between congruence proofs and a transformation approach to geometry. Additionally, to illustrate these activities for instructors, we provide examples of prospective teachers’ work on some of these problems.

Including School Mathematics Teaching Applications in an Undergraduate Discrete Mathematics Course

This paper introduces lessons designed to incorporate applications to teaching high school mathematics in an undergraduate Discrete Mathematics course. Because many prospective high school teachers do not take courses that are specifically designed for teachers, providing materials aimed at teacher preparation that can be easily integrated into courses that serve a general mathematics major is one strategy for addressing mathematics teacher preparation. We developed lessons using four guiding features: choosing appropriate content; making school mathematics connections; incorporating active learning; and providing robust lesson notes. Our interview-based findings document how the lessons were used by instructors and analyze the mathematical ideas and understandings that arose from the use of the lessons at two different sites.

Assessing prospective teachers’ affective component related to working with statistical projects

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the cognitive component of Spanish prospective high school teachers about correlation and regression. The evaluation is based on the analysis of the cognitive suitability of a statistical project carried out by 65 students preparing to become mathematics teachers, after having previously worked with that project. The project is based on real data from the relationships of live expectancy with different indicators of human development, taken from the UN web server, and is intended to introduce correlation and regression in high school, The analysis of the participants’ written productions is used to assign a level in each indicator of cognitive suitability, which extends those proposed in a previous work. It also serves to identify examples of the cognitive component of teachers’ knowledge about correlation and regression.

High school prospective teachers’ problem-solving reasoning that involves the coordinated use of digital technologies

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to characterize and discuss ways of reasoning that prospective high school mathematics teachers develop and exhibit in a problem-solving scenario that involves the coordinated use of digital technologies. A conceptual framework that includes Virtual Learning Spaces (VLS) and Resources, Activities, Support and Evaluation (RASE) essentials is used to introduce and support a problem-solving approach to structure learners’ problem-solving activities that encouraged them to share ideas, discuss and extend mathematical discussions beyond formal settings. Main results indicated that prospective high school teachers relied on a set of tool affordances (dragging objects, looking and exploring object’s loci, using sliders, quantifying and visualizing mathematical relations, etc.) to formulate, explore and identify properties or relations to share, discuss and support mathematical conjectures. In this context, the participants recognized and valued the importance of using several tools to both dynamically represent and explore mathematical tasks and to share and constantly refine their mathematical ideas and problem-solving approaches.

Virtual forms, actual effects: how amplifying student voice through digital media promotes reflective practice and positions students as pedagogical partners to prospective high school and practicing college teachers

AbstractDigital media have unique potential to amplify student voice in both high school teacher preparation and academic development for college faculty. This paper applies narrative analysis to participant descriptions of how three uses of digital media amplify student voice in the context of a single higher education consortium: (1) high school students and prospective high school teachers use email to engage in dialogue as part of a larger project within the consortium's secondary teacher preparation program, (2) undergraduate student consultants use visual mapping technology as a classroom observation tool through one of the consortium's academic development programs for college faculty and (3) graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and staff engaged in pedagogical partnerships within and beyond this consortium use on an online platform to publish reflective essays on their collaborative work. Amplifying student voice through these uses of digital media has the following actual effects: it creates the possibility for exchanges between students and teachers across space and time; it supports the development of reflective practice; and it encourages the embrace of a partnership approach to teaching and learning.

Prospective High School Physics Teachers’ Beliefs about Teaching Practices: From Traditionalist to Constructivist

The main aim of this study was to determine the teaching practices of prospective high school physics teachers with respect to their preference for teaching as a traditionalist or as a constructivist. To study the beliefs of prospective high school physics teachers on this subject, firstly, the Teacher Belief Survey was administered to 135 prospective high school physics teachers; and then semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven prospective high school physics teachers. Analyzing of the survey and interviews showed that most prospective high school teachers had intermediate (traditionalist to constructivist) beliefs about teaching physics.

Una Propuesta para el Análisis de las Prácticas Matemáticas de Futuros Profesores sobre Derivadas

En el presente trabajo se informa de los resultados obtenidos al analizar las prácticas matemáticas de una muestra de futuros profesores de secundaria/bachillerato a propósito de dos tareas sobre derivadas. Este análisis ejemplifica el uso y alcances de las nociones prácticasmatemáticas y configuración de objetos y procesos, proporcionadas por el Enfoque Onto-Semiótico (EOS) del conocimiento matemático, para la caracterización de los conocimientos del profesorado de matemáticas. Los resultados del análisis evidencian tanto una desconexión entre los distintos significados parciales de la derivada como la necesidad de potenciar el conocimiento del contenido. Este aprendizaje puede hacerse mediante actividades que favorezcan el uso e identificación de objetos matemáticos, sus significados y los procesos involucrados en la solución de tareas matemáticas.

���������� ������������ ������������ ��������������� ���������������� ���������� ���������������� ����������� ������������ ���������� ������ �����

The specifics of competence-based management in training students for the Master�s Degree in higher education pedagogy are revealed. The author argues for the necessity to replace the qualification model of higher education establishment graduate with the competence model and emphasizes the need to develop sophisticated methods to manage the professional competence building of prospective high-school teachers. The competence-based management is defined and its specific characteristics are highlighted to confirm that it is a separate form of higher education institution�s management. The original model for managing the process of building professional competence in the high-school pedagogy is described with its main ingredients: methodological, substantive and organizational and technological. The author lists the regulatory, managerial and organizational-and-pedagogic conditions for effective model performance and describes how to implement the proposed model and to set up evaluative and analytical monitoring of the model performance.

Literacy pedagogical content knowledge in the secondary curriculum

In this paper, I address the challenge of raising the consciousness of prospective secondary teachers about their roles in supporting their students in the advanced literacy demands of their subject specializations. I argue that to better equip them in supporting the conceptual development of diverse groups of students, prospective high school teachers need, as part of their pedagogical content knowledge, an understanding of the pervasive role of language and literacy in learning. I illustrate how, after even a short but intense input, one group of prospective teachers with no prior knowledge of language developed a capacity to plan content area learning with an informed consciousness of the role of language and literacy in the learning of diverse groups of their students. The continued development of literacy pedagogical content knowledge, I argue, will be crucial to the strength of those pillars of government reform related to lifting the academic achievement of adolescents in disadvantaged schools.

Higher Education and Class Mobility in the State of California: “What Is to Be Done?”

I met Gabriela Macias a few months ago in an undergraduate class in history that I teach to prospective high school teachers. A diminutive middle-aged woman, Gabriela was watchful in class and seemed indifferent to my attempts to reach through her stony silences. But a couple of weeks into the class, I made a breakthrough. We had been discussing the role of passion in education. I had started the discussion by insisting that unless teachers feel a real sense of commitment to the student body and feel passionate about empowering students with knowledge and ideas, they have no business being in the classroom. In retrospect, my statements seemed a little extreme, but it is hard to entice students to enter the teaching profession by the prospect of tests, more state-administered tests, and even more standardized examinations! When Gabriela started speaking, the class fell silent. But it was not her eloquence that silenced us; it was her accent. Her accent was impenetrable! I am troubled by this public admission and even considered omitting this sentence from this essay. As an immigrant from India, I find people often have trouble understanding the stubborn Indian cadences that litter my superficially Americanized speech. But that day we all strained to understand Gabriela.

Using dynamic geometry software Cabri 3D for teaching analytic geometry

In this study, we investigated that whether Cabri 3D can be a useful tool for teaching analytic geometry of space or not. For this purpose, we focused on solving some traditional spatial analytic problems by using Cabri 3D. Experiments were conducted with 24 prospective high school teachers who had a mathematics degree and were attending the postgraduate teacher training course. Results of the study show that Cabri 3D is potentially very useful software for learning and teaching spatial analytic geometry. Another important result of the study is that Cabri 3D facilitates understanding by visualizing.

Meta-Problems in Mathematics

Let's call the problem of making up a nice problem a meta-problem. Meta-problems in mathematics are not meta-mathematics problems. The idea is to apply mathematics to the design of pleasing mathematics problems. So, we are dealing with applied mathematics rather than with philosophy. Talking with teachers over the years, Fve found an amazing number of these meta-problems. Every now and then, someone publishes a method to solve some class of them (see [1,2,3,4], for example). One purpose of this paper is to show how classical algebra and number theoiy can be applied to meta-problems; another is to lobby for the inclusion of such applications in courses for prospective high school teachers.

An Investigation of Cultural Literacy among High School Students and Prospective High School Teachers

Given the large increase of knowledge as well as changing views of how it is acquired, the question of what to teach students is of pivotal importance. One controversial suggestion, that of cultural literacy in Hirsch's 1987 book, was considered here. An attempt was made to validate an objective test based on the terms in Hirsch's book and to measure the effect of schooling on the construct, cultural literacy. The test was reliable and valid; scores on cultural literacy increased with education. In addition, test scores correlated strongly with other measures of academic success, i.e., scores on the American Cultural Literacy Test, correlated .77 with scores on the verbal aptitude part of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and .63 with high school grade point average.

Position and Imposition: Power Relations in a Multicultural Foundations Class

My students, who are prospective high school teachers, reflect many of the common attitudes held by the larger general population; that is, they tend to be fairly apolitical, individualistic, and nonconfrontational, and most often they view situations and people from a personal point of view. My primary challenge as a White teacher educator is thus to intervene in such a way that my students do not reproduce in their teaching what they have experienced in their schooling. Two of my goals are that students develop the ability to be open and reflective about their learning histories, values, beliefs, and actions on those beliefs; and that they become conscious of the hidden curriculum of schooling (Chan & Rueda, 1979). Because I want my students to problematize (critically examine) the puzzling and contradictory aspects of their views of reality as well as their experiences, I strive to help them discover, experience, and construct powerful alternatives to their past experiences. I want them to become aware of the role that they may be asked to play in perpetuating oppressive structures and practices in the educational system and find ways to take an oppositional stance to an oppressive role. In effect, I try to teach my students to challenge the status quo in the hopes that they, as the teachers of the future, will choose to take a stand in the interests of social justice. Translating theory into practice, however, has proven difficult. While I do not assume that all prospective teachers enter teacher education programs with racist and sexist values, I believe that a great majority of them do and that they tend either to be unconscious of this reality or want to deny it. As a teacher I have observed that a critical

Abstract algebra for high school teachers: an experiment with learning groups

We consider a different classroom approach to teaching abstract algebra for prospective high school teachers by breaking the class up into small groups, providing them with worksheets which organize the material into problem sets that can be solved by these groups. We report on the result of this approach in a particular classroom setting.

Teacher Education Graduates

Differing prospective job rewards guide women into elementary or secondary teaching. Among prospective high school teachers there are no gender-linked job reward preferences.

Discovering A Congruence Theorem: A Project Of A Geometry-For-Teachers Class

College teachers who work with prospective high school teachers have noted that their students tend to “teach as they have been taught.” Therefore, when one of my students brought a problem to my geometry-for-teachers class, I decided to make the solving of this problem a class project. The ensuing investiga- gation was one of the most interesting and rewarding made by my classes.

An Evaluation of the Newer University Biology Core Curriculum from the Professional Viewpoint and Implications for Secondary Schools. An Evaluation of High School and University Biology Instruction 1960-1966

for all undergraduate biology majors, including pre-professional students and prospective high school teachers. It was also agreed that a required core should not include more than 1 or 2 years of work beyond the introductory course, in order to provide adequate time for biology electives, work in related disciplines, and for the acquisition of a liberal education outside of the sciences. CUEBS (1965b, p. 8) notes that a basic assumption which was made in constructing the curriculum was that all undergraduate biology majors, irrespective of future specialization, would profit from having a common core of biological science. This core should offer the student a rigorous and sophisticated introduction to the principles of all important areas of modern biology and to various groups of organisms. Moreover, a sound background in chemistry, physics, and mathematics for all biology majors is also assumed.

On the Curriculum for Prospective High School Teachers

On the Curriculum for Prospective High School Teachers

On the Curriculum for Prospective High School Teachers

(1958). On the Curriculum for Prospective High School Teachers. The American Mathematical Monthly: Vol. 65, No. 2, pp. 101-104.