Explore the vast range of titles available.

This study examined the effect of a professional development training programme on 20 second-year preservice mathematics teachers’ knowledge in foundational mathematical concepts at a rural university in South Africa. The training programme aimed to enhance preservice teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching. An embedded mixed-methods case study design was employed. Baseline and endline assessments were administered before and after the training. A participant feedback survey was also administered after the training. Results showed that the training significantly improved the preservice teachers’ understanding and confidence in the selected concepts, despite their low baseline scores. The participants also expressed satisfaction with the knowledge they gained and appreciated the integration of theory and practice in the training. These findings suggest the need for teacher training institutions to ensure that preservice teachers are well versed in both university-level and school-level mathematics. They also support the need for collaboration with other stakeholders to provide preservice teachers with relevant and engaging professional development opportunities that can enhance their mathematical knowledge for teaching.ContributionFindings of this study point to a renewed emphasis on the creation of greater collaborations between institutions of higher learning and other key stakeholders to promote the development of prospective teachers’ knowledge of what they will be expected to teach.

This study examines the relationship between teacher knowledge and student learning for 9,556 students of 181 middle school physical science teachers. Assessment instruments based on the National Science Education Standards with 20 items in common were administered several times during the school year to both students and their teachers. For items that had a very popular wrong answer, the teachers who could identify this misconception had larger classroom gains, much larger than if the teachers knew only the correct answer. On items on which students did not exhibit misconceptions, teacher subject matter knowledge alone accounted for higher student gains. This finding suggests that a teacher's ability to identify students' most common wrong answer on multiple-choice items, a form of pedagogical content knowledge, is an additional measure of science teacher competence.

The aim of this study is to reveal experienced primary school teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), sub-components of PCK, and their possible interactions with science teaching. To this aim, a multiple holistic case study design was used. The research used a comprehensive PCK model consisting of 5 categories and 28 subcategories to reflect the knowledge base of teachers. Among the volunteered teachers, four experienced primary school teachers were randomly selected for research. Data triangulation, which utilizes interview, observation, and document analysis together, along with a subject matter knowledge test (SMKT) developed by the researchers, was used to explore teachers' PCKs in-depth. According to the results of the research, it was concluded that instead of making standard generalizations about teachers' PCK, explaining the situation over sub-categories and making comparisons on the basis of teacher competencies can guide our PCK understanding. Due to PCK's complexity and depth, several results were obtained in this study. One of the basis result of the study, the PCK category, in which experienced primary school teachers are the best compared to other categories, is pedagogical knowledge which is consistent between teachers and within each teacher's own levels of sub-categories. The weakest PCK categories of teachers were knowledge of assessment in science and curriculum knowledge of science, this situation also leads to inadequacies in using appropriate contemporary learning-teaching processes, strategies, alternative assessment methods and rubrics. Therefore, the PCK model of the research can be recommended as an explanation guide for future studies.

This paper draws from a broad study that explored mathematics teachers’ engagement with textbooks within the Lesson Study context. In the current paper, we report on teachers’ use of mathematics textbook activities to inform their instructional decisions during collaborative lesson planning of numeric and geometric patterns. The study took place within the Lesson Study (LS) context – a teacher development practice that emphasises, inter alia, collaborative lesson planning. Data was collected by observing teachers during collaborative lesson planning and through interviews. Data analysis was informed by the Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) framework and Modes of teacher engagement with the textbook. Findings suggest that teachers’ instructional decisions are mainly stimulated by the textbooks, teachers use textbook activities with fidelity, and they seldom adapt the activities drawn from the textbooks. However, where adaptation occurs teachers do it superficially. We contend that the capacity to conduct in-depth interrogation of the text is a derivative of mathematics subject matter knowledge (SMK) as well as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Therefore, the widespread adoption of text without interrogation could be indicative of the lack of requisite content knowledge and pedagogical skills.

Teachers’ knowledge of the subject matter is considered an important component of their expertise in teaching mathematics. Yet how teachers’ understanding of one content area is related to other content areas has not been investigated in depth. We explored this question by investigating teachers’ knowledge of two theoretically related areas: (1) fractions and (2) ratios and proportional relationships. We also investigated the extent to which teachers’ educational backgrounds are related to their understanding of these concepts. Based on the results obtained from structural equation modeling and path analysis, we found that teachers’ knowledge of these two concepts is highly interdependent, forming a single construct. Furthermore, holding a credential in teaching mathematics, the route teachers took to enter teaching, and their undergraduate majors were associated with their knowledge of these concepts. This study illustrates the importance of attending to the theoretical relationships among different content areas when assessing teachers’ subject matter knowledge and provides initial evidence that teachers’ subject matter knowledge may be unidimensional for theoretically related domains.

Developing science identity in pre-service science teachers is important as it influences their perceptions about science teaching and learning. Pre-service teachers’ science identity can be developed in their specific modules where they obtain content knowledge. Grounded in the notion of pre-service teachers’ learning agendas, and identity development, this paper presents an argument pertaining to how science content modules at one South African university contribute to pre-service teachers’ development of their identities as science teachers. Data were collected through individual interviews with 13 pre-service science teachers and analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis. The findings revealed four categories of aspects that influenced the pre-service science teachers’ identity construction and development. The first is about the nature of the subject matter knowledge taught in the modules. The second is about the context in which this subject matter knowledge is taught. The third concerns how teaching is conducted, and the last comprises the nature of practical work. These findings are discussed, and the implications related to the structure of science content modules in initial science teacher education programs are discussed.

Although integrating the history of science (HOS) into teaching has long been recommended in science education research, studies have revealed conflicting results on its effectiveness. These are mainly due to the need for more studies in this context. Therefore, this research aimed to explore the impact of HOS teaching on science process skills, knowledge of science concepts, and attitudes toward science. In this research, a quasi-experimental research design was employed. The HOS was contextualized into the topic of the circulatory system. Two intact classes were chosen as the experimental group (EG) and the two others as the control group (CG). The EG students were involved in HOS activities during the treatment, while the CG students followed the curriculum-driven activities. The findings indicated that the impact of HOS education was evident, as students in the EG outperformed those in the CG in retaining knowledge of science concepts and demonstrating positive attitudes towards science. However, HOS education and curriculum-driven instruction have similarly impacted the development of science process skills. These results support the conceptual premise that HOS teaching is an alternative and a worthy way of supporting students’ scientific literacy.

This study explored the use of error analysis to support the development of pre-service mathematics teachers’ subject-matter knowledge of school mathematics topics. Despite extensive literature revealing that both in-service and pre-service mathematics teachers have content knowledge gaps in the mathematics they are expected to teach, there is no consensus on how it can be improved. However, a growing body of literature suggests pre-service mathematics teachers’ subject matter knowledge of school mathematics topics should be fully developed by the time they exit the teacher training institution. This suggests that there is a need to ensure that pre-service mathematics teachers engage with school mathematics content in their modules. This study, therefore, explored the extent to which the engagement of pre-service mathematics teachers with error analysis could potentially influence the development of their subject matter knowledge of school mathematics topics, specifically focusing on school geometry concepts. The study was conducted with sixty-one pre-service mathematics teachers. Data were collected utilizing written tasks and open-ended questionnaire. The findings showed that pre-service mathematics teachers do have knowledge gaps; however, engaging in error analysis resulted in a gradual development of their subject matter knowledge. Based on the findings the author recommends that a large-scale study be done to explore the effect of error analysis towards the development of pre-service mathematics teachers subject matter knowledge of school mathematics topics as well additional research focusing on different topics.

This paper reports on research investigating six middle school teachers without engineering degrees as they taught an engineering unit on the engineering design process. Videotaped classroom sessions and teacher interviews were analyzed to understand the subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge the teachers used and developed as they introduced the eight steps of the engineering design process (from content standards for the state of Massachusetts, USA). The teachers demonstrated wide-ranging knowledge of the engineering design process, and this paper describes two of the steps the teachers showed a more sophisticated understanding—constructing a prototype and redesigning. Examples from the teachers illustrate strengths that can be built upon as well as some areas for further development.

Gaps in elementary teachers' subject matter knowledge influence their teaching and student learning of science. Educative curriculum materials can support teacher subject matter knowledge. We investigated whether preservice teachers in 2 universities (n = 92) had gains in subject matter knowledge if they participated in modeled instruction related to educative curriculum materials and if they used the curriculum within field experiences. We found that there were significant gains in subject matter knowledge for those who participated in modeled instruction and those who used the educative curriculum materials in field experiences. Qualitative findings indicated that the participants valued participating in modeling and practice of the lessons and teaching the curriculum materials within field experiences as it related to their content knowledge.