Influence of Preservice Teachers' Specialized Content Knowledge Developed in Methods Course on Their Representations in Teaching Whole Numbers

• In Event: Studying and Improving Math Teacher Preparation

Abstract

The quality of teachers' mathematics specialized content knowledge presumably shapes their effective use of mathematical representations in teaching and thus, the quality of their mathematics instruction. This study examines this assumption by investigating the development of elementary preservice teachers’ specialized mathematics knowledge for teaching whole numbers in a mathematics methods course and how such knowledge shaped their use of representations to teach whole number topics in their practicum classrooms. It revealed that participants improved their specialized knowledge for teaching whole numbers and had relatively high-quality representations in their teaching. However, while their specialized knowledge influenced their choice of representations, and their choice influenced the quality of their representations, specialized content knowledge did not directly influence the quality of representations used.

Authors

• Jian Wang, Texas Tech University

• Raymond Flores, Texas Tech University

• Minju Yi, Texas Tech University

• Guoxiang Wang, Texas Tech University

• Hyunjin Shim, Texas Tech University