A methodology to investigate pre-service teachers’ content-related instructional decisions and teaching actions

ABSTRACT

Teacher educators need to better understand how pre-service teachers make decisions that lead them to enact particular content knowledge in their lessons. Lesson observations can be used to examine the content knowledge manifesting in teaching actions and stimulated recall interviews can offer insights into teaching decisions. However, methodological approaches are needed that use strategic combinations of data collection and analysis techniques to illuminate connections between teaching actions and decisions. This paper describes one such methodological approach that investigates (i) pre-service teachers’ content knowledge that manifests in their live teaching actions and (ii) the decisions that lie behind those actions including the influences on those decisions. The approach is illustrated using data from a study of secondary mathematics pre-service teachers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the analytical approach described and the potential for findings produced using this approach to inform the design of teacher education experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Methodology
• pre-service teacher decision making
• enacted content knowledge
• stimulated recall
• professional experience

Acknowledgments

The author expresses her sincere thanks to Dr Jo Balatti and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their feedback on this manuscript.

Ethics statement

Permission to collect data was sought and received prior to any data collection from the James Cook University ethics committee, state government and Catholic Education bodies, and the relevant school leaders and staff

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leah Daniel

Leah Daniel is a lecturer in mathematics education at James Cook University in Australia. Her research interests include mathematics pre-service teacher development and school engagement programs.