Do Preservice Elementary Mathematics Teachers' Beliefs Matter? An Empirical Study From a Large-Scale Data Set

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Confronting Beliefs and Mastering Domains as Preservice Teachers in Mathematics Education

Abstract

In this study, we conducted a two-part investigation by exploring US elementary pre-service
mathematics teachers’ belief cluster profiles based on five dimensions and then examined
whether preservice teachers’ mathematics content knowledge, mathematics pedagogical content
knowledge, and perceptions about their teacher preparation differed by belief clusters. Drawing
on the data of N=1,501 US elementary preservice mathematics teachers extracted from the 2008
TEDS-M data sets, results yielded three distinct belief cluster profiles and found that elementary
preservice teachers’ mathematics content knowledge, mathematics pedagogical content
knowledge, and perceptions about their preparedness differed among these cluster profiles.

Authors

• Zhanxia Yang, Texas Tech University

• Raymond Flores, Texas Tech University

• Guoxiang Wang, Texas Tech University

• Lu Guo, Sam Houston State University