Investigating the Pedagogy of Mathematics

How Do Teachers Develop Their Knowledge?

This book responds to the growing interest in the scholarship of mathematics teaching; over the last 20 years the importance of teachers' knowledge for effective teaching has been internationally recognised. For many mathematics teachers, the critical link between practice and knowledge is implied rather than explicitly understood or expressed. This means it can be difficult to assess and thus develop teachers' professional knowledge. The present book is based on two studies investigating exactly how teachers developed their pedagogical knowledge in mathematics from different sources. It describes:

• how teachers' own teaching experience and reflection, and their daily exchanges with colleagues, are the most important sources of knowledge,
• how important in-service training and organized professional activities are,
• how teachers' previous experiences as students, their pre-service training and their reading of professional literature have less influence on their professional knowledge.

The findings in this book have significant implications for teachers, teacher educators, school administrators and educational researchers, as well as policy-makers and school practitioners worldwide.

Contents:

• The Chicago Study:

  • Introduction
  • Review of the Literature
  • A Conceptual Framework of the Study
  • Research Design and Procedures
  • Findings of the Chicago Study (I): Pedagogical Curricular Knowledge
  • Findings of the Chicago Study (II): Pedagogical Content Knowledge
  • Findings of the Chicago Study (III): Pedagogical Instructional Knowledge
  • Findings of the Chicago Study (IV): Some Other Issues
  • Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations

• The Singapore Study:

  • The Singapore Study
  • Comparison and Conclusion

Readership: Teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, educational policy-makers and non-experts interested in education issues.
Key Features:

• Focus on key issues of education: The book presents research in one of the most important issues in contemporary educational reform and development — how teachers develop their professional knowledge
• Rigorous and distinctive research methodology: The research presented in the book has three major distinctions from other published work in the concerned area. 1. More specific: it directly addresses the question of how teachers develop their knowledge in the domain of pedagogy; 2. More systematic: it takes into account the whole life of teachers, including their pre-service and in-service experiences, not just a special period of teachers' life or a special source of teachers' knowledge; 3. More representative: the research subjects consist of a substantial number of teachers with a wide range of experiences, and the selection of the sample is random in main stages
• Significance value: The research presented in the book has significance in both theory and practice concerning teacher professional knowledge. In addition, as the main body of the book is based on the authors' PhD study, the book is also valuable for doctoral students in relevant areas in their graduate study in terms of both content and method