Section archive - Instruction in Teacher Training

The purpose of this study was to explore how prospective teachers’ (PTs’) conceptions of various mathematical topics develop.Consistent with prior findings, this study showed that PTs entered with limited conceptions. This study showed further that (a) well-designed tasks (addressing the PTs’ incoming conceptions as well as focusing on the desired conceptions) can help PTs develop content knowledge, (b) conceptual difficulties may persist even with well-designed tasks, and (c) artifacts of children’s mathematical thinking can be used to develop mathematical content knowledge.

The purpose of this study was to develop a training for physical education (PE) teachers on how to create a need-supportive learning environment. This article described how researchers and experienced secondary school PE teachers closely collaborated to develop a continuous professional development (CPD) training grounded in Self-Determination Theory’s principles of need-supportive teaching. The findings suggest that teachers highly valued opportunities for active participation, collaboration and experiential learning. In addition, the PE teachers highly appreciated the theoretical background information to be able to understand and follow the rest of the training.

The purpose of this study was to understand how a group of pre-service English language teachers constructed and negotiated their identities as teachers during a teaching practicum. The results of this study suggest that the identity work is an essential feature of student teachers’ experiences of a teaching practicum as they attempt to position themselves as particular types of teachers, not only within their placement schools, but also in relation to their understandings of what it means to be a language teacher, both within Hong Kong and beyond. However, the study also highlighted the potential for identity conflict that can arise if there is a mismatch between the subject positions offered to pre-service teachers within teacher education programmes and practicum placement schools and the student teachers own self-positioning as teachers.

In this study, the authors examine the task and knowledge demands for teaching integer operations with representations by analyzing teaching practice. Based on their analysis, the authors organize the generated knowledge components using the Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching framework. They conclude by drawing implications for teacher educators and curriculum developers.