Opportunity to Learn to Teach Mathematics: A Comparative Study

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which differences in reform-based pedagogical approaches in teacher education programs are related to differences in learning outcomes. Specifically, the study examines the influence of opportunities to learn (OTL) (i) through pedagogical practices used in teacher preparation, (ii) how to plan mathematics instruction, and (iii) mathematics instruction for conceptual learning, on pre-service teachers’ Mathematics Content Knowledge (MCK), Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge (MPCK), and beliefs about learning mathematics.
Study Design and Methods
This study focuses on the responses of elementary pre-service teachers’ (PST) in their final stages of their teacher preparation program across the 17 countries and within three countries that took part in the Teacher Education and Development Study (TEDS-M). Three countries with substantial number of teacher education programs that participated in the survey are being used for the within-country analysis: Poland, Russia, and the United States.
Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the OTL and the outcome variables. A Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) test was used to analyze the differences in the outcome variables (MCK, MPCK, and beliefs about learning) across the countries. The final analysis is a multilevel modeling technique to show the relationships between OTL to teach mathematics, and the knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics within the three selected countries. All these analyses take into consideration the complex sampling process, while controlling for gender and socio-economic status.
Findings and Policy Implications
The MANOVA test revealed a significant difference in the multivariate main effect. The study further showed that the pedagogical practice most often experienced by the PSTs was listening to lecture presentations. In 4 countries, however, group work was the pedagogical practice experienced most often.
With regards to learning how to plan mathematics instruction, three composite measures were examined: Analysis of learning goals, Meaningful learning experiences, and Introduction to Relevant Instructional Materials. PSTs from the Philippines, Russia, and the United States, for example, reported having OTL Analysis of learning goals often, while the reports of PSTs from Poland showed that these experiences for planning instruction were rare or never. Similarly, the PSTs’ reports in the Philippines, Russia, and the United States suggested the OTL how to plan mathematics instruction by selecting Meaningful learning experiences were experienced often or occasionally. PSTs reports in Germany, on the other hand, showed that these opportunities to plan instruction were experienced less often. Finally, PSTs in Russia reported having OTL how to plan mathematics instruction through the Introduction to Relevant Instructional Materials more often, while PSTs from Norway (ALU) reported that they had these experiences on average less often.
Learning mathematics instruction for conceptual understanding was examined using the variables: (i) learning how to explore multiple solution strategies with pupils, (ii) learning to make distinctions between procedural and conceptual knowledge when teaching, (iii) Learning how to show why a procedure works. The most often learned mathematics instruction was learning how to explore multiple solution strategies with pupils.

Author

• Rachel Angela Ayieko, Duquesne University