In-service Teachers’ Didactic-Mathematical Knowledge on Elementary Algebraic Reasoning. The Case of the Shanxi Province of China

Abstract

In this study, the Chinese in-service teachers' didactic-mathematical knowledge on elementary algebraic reasoning is assessed using a questionnaire developed in Spain. The first aim is to diagnose the current situation in China of in-service primary school teachers' knowledge regarding elementary algebra and its teaching. The second aim is to provide enlightenment to teacher training so as to make the concept of early algebra popularized among Chinese primary school teachers. The sample included 264 primary school teachers from the Shanxi province in China. The questionnaire consists of two parts: part 1 comprises 5 items about teachers' gender, teaching experience, professional certificate, educational background, and region; part 2 comprises 25 items from the original version in English. The difficulty, discrimination indexes as well as reliability of the instrument have been determined, reflecting the psychometric properties of the instrument. The dependent variables include 7 aspects divided in 2 dimensionalities apart from the total score. The results reveal Chinese primary school teachers have solid knowledge of algebra but lack pedagogical knowledge in early algebra. This suggests that it would be necessary to set clear training objectives on the core idea of the algebra in national teacher training programs; in addition, our findings emphasize more attention should be given to teachers who have less than 10 years of teaching experience. Finally, we conclude teacher training would be more effective if highly experienced teachers-more than 20 years, became trainers to teach the practical modules.