Section archive - Instruction in Teacher Training

This article explores effective mathematics teaching as constructed in Finnish and Swedish teacher educators’ discourses. Teacher educators in both countries bring into play a variety of aspects identified in the field of mathematics education research, when talking about good mathematics teachers/teaching. The teachers often talk about the same general categories, but a deeper analysis reveals a substantial difference between the characters of the discourses concerning how most of these categories are conceptualized.

This study attempted to validate the argument that special knowledge is needed for teaching, in addition to pure mathematical knowledge. The authors explored participants’ knowledge with respect to four teaching practices: providing and evaluating explanations; selecting and using representations; analyzing student errors, misconceptions, and non-conventional solutions; and selecting tasks. The authors found no statistically significant differences between the three groups under consideration in the pure mathematical knowledge items. However, the findings suggest that measuring teacher knowledge by using multiple-choice tests might mask true differences that may exist among participants from different populations. Hence, alternative approaches are needed to tap into participants’ knowledge.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the feasibility of using Ms Excel in teaching whole Basic Statistics Course to pre-service elementary science teachers and then to show the effects of this treatment on pre-service teachers' attitudes towards statistics. This study demonstrated that using Excel in Teacher Education in Statistics Course is feasible in most topics. Furthermore, the capabilities, accessibility and practicality of Excel program in teaching most basic statistics course topics to pre-service science teachers were demonstrated. This study showed that using Excel applications and homework assignments and class presentations in Teacher Education in Statistics Course improved attitudes towards statistics in the experiment group more than the control group.

present study examines the effectiveness of service-learning as a pedagogical approach that seeks to bridge the gap of understanding between predominantly White undergraduate preservice teachers (PSTs) and diverse students at a local elementary school. Analysis of ‘before’ and ‘after’ reflective papers and surveys from 23 PSTs enrolled in an entry-level education course as well as reflective letters from 41 fourth-grade students, revealed that prior to the project, PSTs feared that students’ language barriers or home circumstances might prohibit them from understanding or valuing the concepts introduced through the project.