Supporting the development of preservice teachers’ mathematical connection skills in a teacher education programme

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the extent to which pre-service teachers’ mathematical connection skills were promoted through the course designed within the scope of pedagogies of practice (Grossman et al. [2009]. Teaching practice: A cross-professional perspective. Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055–2100. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146810911100905) in the teacher education programme. Data were collected in a course that was designed to develop pre-service mathematics teachers’ (PSTs) mathematical connections skills through a classroom teaching experiment with individual contributions to the whole class learning process. Thirty-six PSTs who were enrolled in the course participated in the present study. Initial and revised lesson plans were used as primary data collection instruments. In the most general sense, the findings demonstrated that most of the PSTs improved their mathematical connection skills during the course. The results of the current study provide insight into how the courses in undergraduate education should be implemented to give PSTs opportunities to develop their mathematical connection skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Mathematical connection
• preservice teachers
• teacher education
• pedagogies of practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.