A typological analysis: understanding pre-service teacher beliefs and how they are transformed

ABSTRACT

This article describes the beliefs and their transformations of members of a cohort of early-childhood, elementary and middle-level pre-service teachers (PSTs) as they professionally develop. A typological analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data collected between August 2011 and May 2013 was utilized to categorize how 40 PSTs’ beliefs transformed throughout their formal teacher preparation. Five typologies were identified, showing variation in how PST beliefs transform or remain static.

Among the findings, strong support related to the development of innovative beliefs during coursework coupled with at least one transformative experience where innovation was observed ‘working’ in the field were sufficient for the transformation to innovative beliefs, despite potential constraints by supervisors, cooperating teachers and/or mandated curricula (Typology 3). Another finding revealed disguised growth toward innovation among those in Typology 5, who reported being innovative and having productive beliefs but described extremely traditional practices. Implications call for improved connections between mathematics methods professors and field supervisors, particularly during clinical internships when PSTs are no longer enrolled in methods courses, to enhance PSTs’ productive struggle in their development of innovative beliefs (T3) and to increase opportunities for disconnects between innovative beliefs and traditional practices to be made explicit and negotiated (T5).

KEYWORDS:

• Pre-service teachers
• teacher beliefs
• mathematics education
• teaching-and-learning process
• typology analysis

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Malia Howell for her assistance analyzing the statistical data for this project. Portions of this study have been presented in poster form at the 38th Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Tucson, AZ, on November 5, 2016.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Adapted from Enochs et al. [57]. Reprinted by permission of Larry Enochs. Adapted from Adamson et al. [58]. Reprinted by permission of Scott Adamson. Adapted from McDougall [59]. Copyright © 2004 by Thomson Nelson. Thomson Nelson gratis use guidelines were met to reprint. Adapted from Beswick et al. [42]. Copyright © 2006 by Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia. Reprinted by permission of Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia. Adapted from Showalter [60]. Reprinted by permission of Betsy Showalter.