The mathematics-education community stresses the importance of real-world connections in teaching. The extant literature suggests that in actual classrooms this practice is infrequent and cursory, but few studies have specifically examined whether, how, and why teachers connect mathematics to the real world. In this study, I surveyed 62 secondary…

In response to the critical shortage of qualified mathematics teachers in the U.S., the TIME 2000 Program was created with funds from the National Science Foundation, at Queens College of the City University of New York. Now institutionalized, the program is designed to support the recruitment, preparation, and retention of prospective teachers…

This case study of a first-year and an experienced teacher presents an analysis of the place and frequency of three types of questions: probing, guiding, and factual. We examined the use of these questions in the course of five lessons, in order to study the relationship between the part of the lesson and types of questions asked. In addition, we…

Student teaching (guided teaching by a prospective teacher under the supervision of an experienced "cooperating" teacher) provides an important opportunity for prospective teachers to increase their understanding of mathematics in and for teaching. The interactions between a student teacher and cooperating teacher provide an obvious mechanism for…

The development and influence of beliefs in teacher education has been a topic of increasing interest for researchers in recent years. This study explores the responses of a group of prospective primary teachers to attempts to facilitate belief change as part of their initial teacher education programme in mathematics. The students' responses…

The purpose of the project reported in this article was to evaluate how assessing teachers' mathematical knowledge within a professional development course impacted from the teachers' perspective their learning and their experience with the course. The professional development course consisted of a 2-week summer institute and the content focus was…

Shulman (1986, 1987) coined the term "pedagogical content knowledge" (PCK) to address what at that time had become increasingly evident--that content knowledge itself was not sufficient for teachers to be successful. Throughout the past two decades, researchers within the field of mathematics teacher education have been expanding the notion of PCK…

It is generally perceived that Chinese elementary teachers have a profound understanding of the school mathematics they teach. This perception has led to further interest in understanding teacher education practices in China. As some dramatic changes in elementary teacher preparation have taken place in China over the past decade, this article…

Detracking and heterogeneous groupwork are two educational practices that have been shown to have promise for affording all students needed learning opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency. However, teachers face significant pedagogical challenges in organizing productive groupwork in these settings. This study offers an analysis of one…

Although video cases are increasingly being used in teacher education as a means of situating learning and developing habits of reflection, there has been little evidence of the outcomes of such use. This study investigates the effects of using a coherent video-case curriculum in a university mathematics methods course by addressing two issues:…

School students of all ages, including those who subsequently become teachers, have limited experience posing their own mathematical problems. Yet problem posing, both as an act of mathematical inquiry and of mathematics teaching, is part of the mathematics education reform vision that seeks to promote mathematics as an worthy intellectual…

Prospective teachers' (PT) beliefs and views regarding teaching and learning affect the way they teach after they have graduated. Often, these views are a consequence of their past experience as pupils themselves. In recent years there has been a great effort toward changing the teaching and learning of mathematics, which raises the need to…

The challenge that we address concerns teachers' shifts toward student-centered instruction. We report on a yearlong professional development study in which two United States elementary school teachers engaged in a teaching experiment, as described by Steffe and Thompson (in: Lesh and Kelly (eds) Research on design in mathematics and science…

This article is situated in the research domain that investigates what mathematical knowledge is useful for, and usable in, mathematics teaching. Specifically, the article contributes to the issue of understanding and describing what knowledge about proof is likely to be important for teachers to have as they engage students in the activity of…

As mathematics educators think about teaching that promotes students' opportunities to learn, attention must be given to the conceptualization of the professional development of teachers and those who teach teachers. In this article, we generalize and expand the instructional triangle to consider different interactions in a variety of teacher…