Revisiting the mathematical content knowledge and attitude of pre-service primary teachers a decade on

Abstract

This research investigated the mathematical content knowledge and attitudes of a cohort of primary education student teachers and is a comparative study to that of Young-Loveridge et al. (2012a, 2012b), which was undertaken 10 years prior. In both studies the student teachers were about to commence their first compulsory mathematics education paper. The focus was on student teacher understanding of the mathematics concepts involved in solving word problems that included two-digit whole numbers, decimals, and fractions. As with the initial study the findings indicate that there was minimal difference in the number of tasks correct between those with UE and those without. Overall, there was little difference in student teacher beliefs and attitudes towards maths. There was very little difference in their mathematical understanding—when solving the tasks most of the students used algorithmic procedures and a range of misconceptions were identified. This raises questions about the nature of mathematics education during the school years and the position of mathematics content knowledge development during initial teacher education (ITE). In this study student teachers were asked to evaluate their confidence in the accuracy of their answers. Their responses indicated a concerning inaccuracy in judging the reasonableness of their answers. Combined, these findings have significant implications for the proposed entry requirements to ITE programmes.