The mathematics teacher’s specialised knowledge (MTSK) model*

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the Mathematics Teacher’s Specialised Knowledge (MTSK) model. It acknowledges earlier contributions to understanding and structuring teachers’ knowledge, in particular, the special debt owed to Shulman’s notion of pedagogical content knowledge and to Ball and collaborators’ Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT), influential for the specialised nature of one of its sub-domains. The authors’ research with teachers has led them to explore the characteristics of MKT and to refine the descriptors relating to its sub-domains, a task which has underlined the difficulty involved in unambiguously delimiting the boundaries which separate these. As a result, and taking into consideration a broader view of the specialised nature of the teacher’s mathematical knowledge, the authors propose a framework which, whilst respecting the major domains of Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge, regards the specialisation in respect of mathematical knowledge as a property which is inherent to the model and extends across all sub-domains.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers’ knowledge
• specialised knowledge
• mathematical knowledge for teaching

Acknowledgements

The Spanish Government (EDU2013-44047-P and EDU2016-81994-REDT), the Mexican Sub-secretary of Higher Education (PRODEP) and the Research Centre COIDESO (University of Huelva, Spain) supported this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

José Carrillo-Yañez http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7906-416X

Nuria Climent http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0064-1452

Miguel Montes http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3181-0797

Luis C. Contreras http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0044-2365

Eric Flores-Medrano http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6134-729X

Dinazar Escudero-Ávila http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6380-9016

Diana Vasco http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7279-6410

Pablo Flores http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3292-6639

Álvaro Aguilar-González http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8550-6718

Miguel Ribeiro http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3505-4431

M. Cinta Muñoz-Catalán http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2329-7612

Notes

1 Dreher, Lindmeier, Heinze, and Niemand (2018) discuss the gap between school knowledge and academic knowledge, and propose SRCK (school-related content knowledge). Unlike MTSK, which finds room for academic knowledge only insofar as it relates to school knowledge, SRCK focuses on the interrelationship between the two types of knowledge (school and academic) in terms of dimensions, such as the curriculum, which MTSK considers within PCK.

2 When writing "the teacher knows" we refer to knowledge a teacher has or may have, with an analytic aim, in which one avoids a prescriptive or evaluative perspective.

Additional information

Funding

The Spanish Government (EDU2013-44047-P and EDU2016-81994-REDT), the Mexican Sub-secretary of Higher Education (PRODEP), and the Research Centre COIDESO (University of Huelva, Spain) supported this research; Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; Ministry of Economy Industry and Competitiveness.