Eight teachers were interviewed concerning how students verify conjectures. The study is a sequel to a previous study, "How Students Verify Conjectures" [Bergqvist, T. (2000). "How students verify conjectures." "Research reports in Mathematics Education" 3]. Teachers' expectations of students' reasoning and performance are examined, and also how…

Current reform-driven mathematics documents stress the need for teachers to provide learning environments in which students will be challenged to engage with mathematics concepts and extend their understandings in meaningful ways (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000, "Curriculum and evaluation standards for school mathematics."…

In the past decade, there has been an increased emphasis on the preparation of teachers who can effectively engage students in meaningful mathematics with technology tools. This study presents a closer look at how three prospective teachers interpreted and developed in their role of facilitating students' mathematical problem solving with a…

This paper draws on videotapes of mathematics lessons prepared and conducted by pre-service elementary teachers towards the end of their initial training at one university. The aim was to locate ways in which they drew on their knowledge of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy in their teaching. A grounded approach to data analysis led to the…

While teaching, teachers need to access both their knowledge of mathematics and knowledge of pedagogy. Practice-based materials afford teachers opportunities to reason about both mathematics and pedagogy within the context of teaching. Accepted systems exist for explaining and reasoning in the domain of mathematics; logic, procedures, and…

The crisis in UK mathematics education, both in schools and universities, has been widely reported. Currently, 24% of full-time mathematics teachers in English secondary education have "weak" or "nil" qualifications in the subject, 31% of secondary mathematics teachers are now over the age of 50, and it is estimated that England alone is short of…

The overriding aim of MANOR--a national mathematics teacher center--in the last decade has been to provide a theoretically sound, research-based and practically feasible framework to support Professional Development (PD) for teachers of mathematics at a time of curriculum reform in Israel. This paper focuses on the preparation of, and support for,…

This paper examines two types of discourse in which teachers engage when discussing case studies based on classroom episodes, and the ways in which the availability of video data of these episodes may motivate a shift in the mode of discourse used. We interviewed two pairs of secondary school mathematics teachers after they had read a case study…

The spiral approach has long been used by curriculum designers to deepen students' knowledge of scientific and mathematical concepts and to bring students to higher levels of abstraction. The benefits of a spiral approach, however, can also be extended to teacher education. This paper describes a spiral activity employed by the "Kidumatica"…

This case study of a preservice secondary mathematics teacher focuses on the teacher's beliefs about his role as mathematics teacher. Data were collected over the final 5 months of the teacher?s university teacher education program through interviews, written course assignments, and observations of student-teaching. Findings indicate that the…

This paper addresses the accumulating knowledge of prospective teachers of secondary school mathematics and their acquired proficiency during the course "Psychological aspects of mathematics education," in which we discussed theoretical models including the intuitive rules theory. Participants' performances are examined by means of an extensive…

In this study we investigate a strategy for engaging high school mathematics teachers in an "initial" examination of their teaching in a way that is nonthreatening and at the same time effectively supports the development of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge [Shulman (1986). "Educational Researcher," 15(2), 4-14]. Based on the work…

We examined the beliefs about science teaching and learning held by elementary preservice teachers in a science methods course, comparing students who had experienced an inquiry-based physics course with those who had not. Students who had taken the physics course prior to the methods semester were better equipped to recognize and learn from…

The investigators sought to design an instructional unit to enhance an understanding of the nature of science (NOS) by taking into account both instructional best practices and suggestions made by noted science philosopher Thomas Kuhn. Preservice secondary science teachers enrolled in a course, "Laboratory Techniques in the Teaching of Science,"…

The focus of this action research study was on the initial stage in reforming our teacher preparation programs. We designed, conducted, evaluated, and revised the components of our teacher preparation programs that were aimed at providing preservice teachers with the confidence and knowledge needed to meet the needs of youth populations…