Prospective primary teachers’ initial mathematical problem-solving knowledge

Abstract

Mathematics teacher candidates enter teacher education with knowledge that could support or limit their learning. It is therefore important to gain insights of this knowledge to inform teacher education. This paper offers such insights for prospective mathematics teachers’ initial knowledge of problem solving (PS) for teaching at the beginning of their teacher education programme. It reports on a study that investigated three categories of problem-solving knowledge for teaching: problem characterization, the PS process, and PS disposition. Participants were 109 prospective primary teachers at a university in Spain. Data sources were questionnaires designed for the study to explore the initial knowledge held by the participants for three categories of problem-solving knowledge. Findings indicated that the participants’ knowledge was stronger regarding the PS process and disposition than for problem characterization but had limitations that needed to be addressed in their teacher preparation programme.

KEYWORDS:

• Mathematical problems
• problem solving
• prospective primary teachers
• teacher knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation’s National R&D + I Plan, funded under project PGC2018-095765-B-100; and the Government of Chile’s National Scientific and Technological Research Commission (CONICYT) [grant number 72170314].