Prospective Secondary School Teachers Research Articles

Probabilistic literacy and reasoning of prospective secondary school teachers when interpreting media news

AbstractEducating students to apply probability literacy and reasoning in out-of-school contexts requires the previous preparation of teachers, which should include the assessment of their mathematical and didactic knowledge. Consequently, we investigated three research questions concerning the probabilistic reasoning and literacy of 66 prospective secondary school teachers when solving probability questions related to a report taken from the media news, their ability to identify the fundamental stochastic ideas needed to solve the task, and their capacity to predict their students’ potential difficulties. The participants needed to compute the probability of a complementary event, several conditional probabilities, and perform critical reading of the information in the report. Despite the participants’ good mathematical knowledge, a high percentage showed reasoning biases, such as the fallacy of the transposed conditional, confusion between conditioning and causation, and few identified the information missing to solve a question. There was a poor capacity to determine the stochastic ideas needed to solve the questions, beyond probability, sample space, conditional probability, and sampling. The participants quoted a few potential errors of their students, mainly conceptual mistakes with scarce recognition of interpretation errors. These results reveal the need to reinforce teachers’ probabilistic literacy, reasoning, and related didactic knowledge.

Prospective secondary school teachers’ knowledge of sampling distribution properties

The aim of the work was to assess prospective Spanish secondary school mathematics teachers’ knowledge of sampling representativeness and variability. To achieve this goal, a questionnaire with four items taken from our previous research with secondary education and high school students was proposed to 66 prospective teachers. In each item, participants were asked to provide four values of a binomial distribution, varying the parameters of the distribution in each item. The analysis of the mean and range of the sample of four values provided by the participants, and its comparison with the theoretically normative and acceptable values of the sampling distribution suggests a good knowledge of the sample representativeness, except for one item and an overestimation of the variability for large values of the number of trials in the binomial distribution. The study of the participants’ arguments serves to identify some reasoning biases related to sampling distribution. The results are better than those obtained with students in our previous studies.

Socio-Emotional Competence and Self-Efficacy of Future Secondary School Teachers

The assessment and development of teachers’ socio-emotional competence has become a topic of interest in education. Within the classroom, this competence is demonstrated not only in teaching but also in student development. The present study addressed the relationship between socio-emotional competence and self-efficacy, as perceived by prospective secondary-school teachers (n = 285) studying for a master’s degree in teacher training, and possible differences according to the socio-demographic characteristics of the sample. A descriptive, correlational and cross-sectional, survey-type method was followed. The instruments used were a previously validated socioemotional competence inventory, and an adapted version of the Teachers Self Efficacy Scale. The results showed an adequate level in most of the socio-emotional competencies studied and a high perception of self-efficacy, and both scales correlated positively. Higher levels of socioemotional competence were found in women and in teachers aged 40 to 50 with more teaching experience. The positive effect of experience in relation to self-efficacy being higher in women than in men was corroborated. We concluded that there is a need to develop the socio-emotional competence of trainee teachers to improve their teaching performance.

Is COVID-19 the Gateway for Digital Learning in Mathematics Education?

Digital learning has reshaped education in many ways. The purpose of this study is to respond to the question of whether COVID-19 is the gateway for digital-learning in mathematics education. To this end, this study explores some uptakes of social media platforms by prospective secondary school teachers. Data was collected from 102 prospective mathematics teachers from the Copperbelt University (CBU). Cluster analysis approach was used. Results revealed that participants’ scores for digital learning in mathematics in cluster 2 were higher than those in both cluster 1 and 3. This is a clear indication that prospective teachers in clusters with low scores are more likely to exhibit low skill levels in the use of mobile technology and the adoption of social media in relation to mathematics pedagogy during the COVID-19 crisis. Results show different patterns. However, overall results show that digital learning could be a positive response to COVID-19 closure period.

Design of STEM Activities: Experiences and Perceptions of Prospective Secondary School Teachers

STEM education is attracting the attention of researchers in the education of sci-ence, mathematics, technology and engineering, for it encourages school practices that prepare students for real life professions. An important aspect of STEM edu-cation is the design of STEM activities, for this design influences how the activi-ties mediate students’ experiences in the STEM classroom. In the present chapter, we suggest to consider this design in two lenses: The lenses of the activity in-quiry and the lenses of the integration of STEM subjects. We further describe ac-tivities built by secondary school prospective mathematics teachers who were part of a teacher education program for preparing graduate students who finished their first degree in mathematics, engineering or computer science. The prospective teachers designed the STEM activities in the frame of a didactic course called “The didactics of teaching secondary school mathematics”. The research results indicated that the prospective teachers found it difficult to write STEM activities according to the ‘discovery inquiry version’ or the ‘open inquiry version’. More-over, they found it difficult to write activities according to the third or fourth inte-gration types.

Assessing the didactic and mathematical knowledge of prospective mathematics teachers in Namibe, Angola

In this work the results of applying a questionnaire to assess didactic-mathematical knowledge of prospective secondary school teachers are analyzed. The sample consists of 31 students, prospective teachers, from the School of Teacher Training of Namibe in Angola. The questionnaire is made of 20 items that assess algebraic content and didactic content knowledge in secondary education. The quantitative analysis of the results show a low level of algebraic and didactic content knowledge and we conclude that it is necessary to improve the teacher training program to enable these teachers to develop the mathematics and didactic competences they need.

Conocimiento especializado de correlación y regresión en futuros profesores de Educación Secundaria

Resumen:La finalidad del trabajo fue evaluar el conocimiento especializado del contenido sobre correlación y regresión de 65 futuros profesores de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato. Después de trabajar con un proyecto estadístico basado en datos de las Naciones Unidas, los participantes analizaron el componente epistémico de la idoneidad didáctica (Godino, 2013) de dicho proyecto. El análisis de las producciones escritas de los participantes permite asignarles un nivel en cada uno de los indicadores, comparar sus conocimientos en dichos indicadores e identificar ejemplos de su conocimiento especializado sobre la correlación y regresión.

Conocimiento del contraste de hipótesis por futuros profesores de Educación Secundaria y Bachillerato

El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar los conocimientos de un grupo de futuros profesores de Educación Secundaria y Bachillerato sobre el contraste de hipótesis. Para ello se analizaron las respuestas de un grupo de 73 futuros profesores del Máster de Educación Secundaria de la Universidad de Granada, a un problema abierto, similar a los propuestos en cursos anteriores en las pruebas de acceso a la universidad. Los resultados indican que, aunque la mayoría de los participantes en el estudio planteó correctamente las hipótesis y eligió un contraste consistente con las mismas, sólo el 15% realizó todo el procedimiento sin errores, y únicamente el 38,4% tomó la decisión correcta y contextualizó, además, los resultados. Se detectaron errores similares a los descritos en investigaciones previas con estudiantes, lo que plantea la necesidad de mejorar la formación de los futuros profesores sobre este contenido.

Space of fuzziness: avoidance of deterministic decisions in the case of the inverse function

We investigate responses of prospective secondary school teachers to a task related to the inverse function concept. We utilize ideas of fuzzy logic as a theoretical lens in analyzing the participants’ demonstrated avoidance of refuting the existence of an inverse to a quadratic function. The analysis is based on 29 responses to a scripting task, in which participants composed a hypothetical dialog between a teacher and students. The findings demonstrate three categories of fuzzy evaluations of a mathematical statement: (a) false blurred to be true; (b) almost false; and (c) almost true. We offer possible reasons for the prevalence of fuzzy thinking in general, and in discussing the inverse of a function in particular.

A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHER ATTITUDE AND TEACHING APTITUDE OF PROSPECTIVE SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

The main purpose of the research was to study the relationship between Teacher attitude and Teaching aptitude of prospective secondary school teachers as they are the future teachers and many at times become the role models for their students. The researcher took 650 prospective secondary school teachers from 10 colleges of education under Nagarjuna university. Teacher attitude inventory by Dr. S.P. Ahluwalia and Teaching aptitude test developed by S.C Gakhar and Dr. Rajnish were used to measure the Teacher attitude and Teaching aptitude of the prospective teachers. The analysis and interpretation of the data was done by calculating the co-efficient of correlation. The major findings of the study were: 1) The Teacher attitude and Teaching aptitude have significant positive correlation 2) Academic qualifications do not have any significant influence on the relationship between Teacher attitude and Teaching aptitude of prospective secondary school teachers. 3) Methodology opted does not have any significant influence on the relationship between Teacher attitude and Teaching aptitude of the prospective secondary school teachers.

The Effect of Training of Prospective Secondary School Teachers in Flander’s System of Classroom Interaction Analysis on the Classroom Verbal Behavior of their Students

The teacher in any educational system performs a significant function since his role is to perpetuate society heritage and simultaneously to energize human resources towards social progress. The face of twentieth-century life is a rapidly changing society, a mentoring store of knowledge, amazing innovations and new understanding, theories and concepts about the teaching learning process. Efforts are being made all over the world to bring about the changes in all educational programs and practices according to the changing needs of society, time and subjects. The sample included 32 prospective teachers drawn from M.A. secondary education class. Eight male and eight female prospective teachers voluntarily participated in the study and formed the treatment group. Equal numbers of male and female prospective teachers, from the same population, were matched to the treatment group and formed a no-treatment group. Two trained observers categorized the classroom interaction on the teaching of Urdu English and Pakistan studies and gathered data in the quantitative form. The interobserver reliability coefficient on the data ranged from .97 to .99. Three Factors Analysis of Variance with repeated measures was applied to find the effect of training, gender and subjects on the verbal behavior of the prospective teachers. The interaction effects between training & gender, training & subjects were also studied. Training of teachers in Flander's system of classroom interaction analysis has a positive and significant effect on the verbal 'behaviour of their students on the greater (accessed) use of the following categories of student talk on Spontaneous talk and Questioning by students. Flanders and other systems of classroom interaction analysis should be included and introduced in teacher education programs of the country at all levels. Teacher educators of all levels should use this system of classroom interaction analysis along with other observation procedures for the supervision and guidance of prospective teachers in practice teaching.

On Singapore Prospective Secondary school teachers' Mathematical content Knowledge

This paper reports the performance of one entire cohort of Singapore prospective secondary school mathematics teachers in a mathematics proficiency test. 
 The prospective teachers were admitted to the teacher education program specializing in teaching secondary school mathematics. The strengths of the prospective teachers' content knowledge, their errors and misconceptions in school mathematical content knowledge are discussed.

A curious case of superscript (−1): Prospective secondary mathematics teachers explain

In mathematics the same symbol – superscript (−1) – is used to indicate an inverse of a function and a reciprocal of a rational number. Is there a reason for using the same symbol in both cases? We analyze the responses of prospective secondary school teachers to this question. The responses are presented in a form of a dialogue between a teacher and a student and are accompanied with participants’ commentary on their choices of instructional approaches. The data show that the majority of participants treat the symbol ☐−1 as a homonym, that is, the symbol is assigned different and unrelated meanings depending on a context. We discuss how knowledge of advanced mathematics (or lack of it) can guide instructional interaction.

Bridging the school placement gap with peer micro-teaching lesson study

Purpose – An adapted version of lesson study (peer micro-teaching lesson study (PMLS)) was used in a one-year initial teacher education (ITE) programme for prospective secondary school teachers of geography, history, citizenship and social science in England. The purpose of this paper is to support student-teachers through an opportunity to share knowledge, skills and practice from their first teaching placements. Design/methodology/approach – In cross-curricular groups (of three or four), the student-teachers co-designed lessons that focused on developing thinking skills when teaching advanced-level content. Two “research lessons” were designed following the use of an initial questionnaire. Feedback from student-teachers was sought through a post-PMLS questionnaire. Participants’ discussions were recorded between the two “research lessons” to capture references to subject knowledge (SK), placement experiences and exploratory talk. Findings – Principal findings to emerge from the project were: cross-curricular PMLS helped to support student-teachers’ development between their two school environments. The collaborative process allowed them to build on their first school experiences by sharing and reflecting on their placements, learning from each other’s pedagogical practice and by improving SK both within and outside of their own specialism. Originality/value – The work is the first known use of PMLS in ITE in the UK, demonstrating that it can be used as a bridge between the first and second school placements. It elaborates a cross-curricular collaborative vision for the use of modified forms of LS in the preparation of new teachers in programmes that are now largely school-led.

Assessment of intercultural competence of vocational teachers in Croatia

Due to the changes in society and the new era of “super-diversity” (Vertovec, 2007) in European countries, intercultural competence is gaining importance both in everyday life situations and teacher training. In the academic year of 2014/2105, a research was conducted on a sample of 136 prospective secondary school teachers undergoing their pedagogical-didactical-methodological training in different universities in the Republic of Croatia. The tool that was employed in the self-assessment of intercultural competence was called Recognising intercultural competence: What shows that I am interculturally competent? The results showed that the examinees perceive their intercultural competence quite high; attitudes (M = 4,09); skills (M = 4,12); knowledge (M = 4,02). There is no significant difference between the perceived dimensions (p = ,282). Further research is recommended to better understand the insights about the examinees’ understanding of intercultural competence.

Exploring prospective teachers' assessment practices: Noticing and interpreting student understanding in the assessment of written work

The goal of this exploratory study was to analyze how beginning prospective secondary school teachers approached the analysis of student written responses to formative assessment probes. We sought to identify what elements of students' written work were noticed, what types of inferences of student understanding were built, and what these noticed elements and inferences told us about levels of sophistication in assessing student understanding. Our results are based on the qualitative analysis of the written evaluations of student work made by 32 prospective secondary school teachers enrolled in an introductory teacher preparation course at our institution. The results of this study suggest that analyzing teachers' assessment of student understanding requires paying attention to both domain-neutral and domain-dependent aspects of teacher reasoning. Domain-neutral dimensions help characterize how a teacher frames the assessment of student understanding. Domain-dependent dimensions characterize how the teacher attends to relevant disciplinary ideas. Our prospective teachers often focused on the description and qualification of student work, making fewer attempts to make sense of student ideas. However, study participants' abilities to generate inferences were varied and influenced by the nature of students' responses. Findings from this study provide a framework for scaffolding and evaluating progress in teachers' abilities to notice and interpret student work. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 585–609, 2015.

English

The value orientation of a person is highly likely to have consequences in his/her attitudes and behavior. The study reported in this paper examined the ecological/environmental value orientations of prospective secondary school teachers enrolled at Addis Ababa University for a one year Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching (PGDT) program. An environmental and sustainability literacy questionnaire (ESLQ) was used to measure the awareness and views of participants on key environmental/ecological issues and concerns. The 15 items that make up the New Ecological Paradigm Scale have been included in the ESLQ as they are. This paper reports findings related to participants' entry profile and their views about key environmental/ecological issues. The results show two interesting trends with regard to participants' ecological value orientations. First, both the eight pro-NEP and the seven pro-DSP statements have been endorsed. Second, the level of agreement with the two apparently contradictory groups of statements happened to be almost exactly the same (with an average of 67.1% endorsement for pro-NEP statements and strikingly equal level of endorsement of 67.4% for pro-DSP statements). The findings thus show that the prospective secondary school teachers hold a syncretic (NEP plus HEP) not a dualistic (NEP vs. HEP) worldview. In fact, a closer look into the patterns of responses to the five categories of statements shows that respondents had, on average, a pro-DSP worldview in four of the five categories. The only category where respondents had a pro-NEP view relates to 'possibility of eco-crisis'. Key words: Dominant social paradigm, ecological value orientations, green development, new ecological paradigm, prospective teachers.

Emotions in prospective secondary teachers when teaching science content, distinguishing by gender

Background:Until recently, the affective components of education had long been undervalued. Today, one finds ever more studies on cognitive and affective interrelationships that are lending support to the idea that affect and cognition are best understood when viewed as independent and complementary mental functions.Purpose:The present work analyses the emotions of prospective secondary education teachers, distinguishing them by gender, in relation to the teaching of Biology, Geology, Physics and Chemistry in order to contribute to designing subsequent interventions targeted at improving science teachers’ occupational health.Sample:The total sample consisted of 178 students (53 male and 125 female) of the post-graduate teaching certificate course at the University of Extremadura, all of whom were prospective secondary school teachers. We also worked with a sub-sample of 66 Science and Engineering graduates (33 male and 33 female).Design and methods:A questionnaire was prepared that includes items on each of the emotions that the prospective teacher might feel when teaching the science content of the proposed courses. The chi-squared test was used to determine whether a relationship exists between emotions and the variable gender when it came to their teaching Biology, Geology, Physics and Chemistry at the compulsory secondary education level.Results:The results showed that the male teachers more frequently report positive emotions than the female. The latter manifested an increase in negative emotions in teaching Geology, Physics and Chemistry content. And the study of the sub-sample showed positive emotions are more frequently reported than negative ones in all four subjects, with this being particularly so in Biology.Conclusions:The study of emotions is vital in the educational formation of prospective secondary teachers. These students will soon face day-to-day life in the classroom, and many of them, especially the women, declare themselves to be emotionally vulnerable, since they describe themselves as experiencing stronger negative emotions. It is essential to provide prospective secondary teachers with a program of support and monitoring during their teaching practice so as to foster awareness of their emotions towards science and its learning. The aim must be to enhance their capacity for self-regulation and control to change those emotions, and to consolidate healthy habits.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Romanian Pre-service Training System in Prospective Secondary-school Teachers’ View

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current Romanian pre-service training system for secondary teachers. Drawing on recent proposals regarding teacher education, put forth by the EU, and on Romanian legal and curricular provisions in force, a small scale questionnaire-survey was conducted in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the framework in use, in prospective secondary-school teachers’ view. The subjects’ answers highlight the good and bad points of the Romanian teacher education system, leading us to the conclusion that the prospective secondary-school teachers’ view is realistic and giving us the opportunity to make some recommendations.

Knowledge for teaching secondary school mathematics: what counts?

This article discusses key issues surrounding the nature and development of professional knowledge for effective teaching of mathematics, especially at the secondary school level. In the education research community it is generally accepted that teachers need more than knowledge of the content they will teach; an additional construct, pedagogical content knowledge, has been proposed to describe the knowledge teachers need in order to make the content comprehensible to learners. Studies demonstrate that mathematical content knowledge (MCK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) predict students’ mathematics achievement gains, and that PCK has the greater influence on achievement. However, the relationship between these two types of knowledge, and how their development might be influenced by studying university level mathematics, remains unclear. The article reports on an Australian study of the knowledge for teaching mathematics of prospective secondary school teachers, which found that MCK is a statistically significant predictor of PCK, and vice versa, although in each case only a small proportion of the variance in the outcome variable was explained. A higher level of prior mathematical experience was also associated with higher levels of MCK, but not PCK. These results suggest that although university level study of mathematics may be beneficial in developing secondary school MCK, it does not have a significant influence on PCK and is therefore inadequate, on its own, for preparing effective teachers of secondary school mathematics.