The Teaching Skills That Novices Bring to Teacher Education: The Case of Eliciting Student Thinking

• In Event: 34.045 - Issues in Preservice Teacher Education

Abstract

Although teacher education is the formal means by which novices are prepared for teaching, preservice teachers have already formed habits of “teaching” which influence their learning to teach. This article reports a study of the specific knowledge of and skills with teaching practice that novices bring to teacher education with respect to one teaching practice, eliciting student thinking in elementary mathematics, and describes the use of a standardized teaching simulation to learn about novices’ skills. The findings reveal details about preservice teachers’ skills and habits of practice at the point that they entered a teacher preparation program. Preservice teachers’ ways of carrying out this particular practice are categorized into three distinct categories.

Authors

• Meghan M. Shaughnessy, University of Michigan

• Timothy A. Boerst, University of Michigan