The Effects of Teacher Preparation on Teaching Knowledge and Practice

• In Event: Further Exploration of the Classroom Video Analysis Approach for Measuring Usable Teaching Knowledge in Mathematics

Abstract

The goal of this longitudinal study is to investigate whether, and under what conditions, graduates of a K-8 teacher preparation program can apply the mathematics content and pedagogy they studied during the program when they begin teaching. In particular, we are interested in how they use the knowledge they acquired in three content courses taken during the beginning of the program and one methods course taken near the end of their program to respond to a range of teaching-like tasks, including those of the classroom video analysis (CVA).
We theorize that a four-year teacher preparation program for K-8 prospective teachers cannot graduate expert teachers, but it can prepare teachers to learn from their early teaching experiences and gradually become expert over time (Hiebert, Morris, Berk, & Jansen, 2007). A key aspect of learning from teaching is analyzing teaching in ways that focus on the interactions between teacher and students around content and generating ideas that could improve such interactions.
The sample for this study includes all graduates from the K-8 teacher preparation program at the University of Delaware who agreed to participate. Included in the battery of tasks they were given at graduation and after one year of teaching are four video clips of elementary classroom instruction, one clip on each of the following topics: multiplication of whole numbers, subtraction of fractions, division of fractions, and finding the arithmetic mean for a set of numbers. Participants had studied the first three topics during the content courses but not the fourth topic (finding the mean).
Following Kersting (2008), participants were asked for each video clip to describe “how the teacher and students interact around the mathematical content.” Using a modified version of Kersting’s (2008) coding rubric, we scored participants’ responses with a 0, 1, or 2 on four dimensions, two focused on content and two focused on pedagogy. In each pair, the first dimension coded participants’ description of the teaching and the second coded their suggestions for improvement. All episodes were deficient in ways that invited critique and suggestions for improvements. Combining all four dimensions, participants’ teaching analysis scores could range from 0-8.
Using the topic of finding the mean as a control, we predicted that if the participants had acquired usable knowledge during the program they would score significantly better on the three topics they had studied, even 3-4 years earlier, and even though finding the mean was a simpler topic mathematically than subtraction and division of fractions.
The findings confirmed, and refined, our predictions. Both at graduation and one year later, participants scored significantly higher on subtraction and division of fractions than finding the mean, but not significantly higher on multiplication of whole numbers. We explain these findings by noting that scores for the three topics studied during the courses align with the amount of time devoted to these topics. Our interpretation is that teacher preparation matters, and that studying content enables graduates to analyze teaching about this content in ways that position them to learn from teaching.

Authors

• James Hiebert, University of Delaware

• Dawn M. Berk, University of Delaware

• Anne K. Morris, University of Delaware