Mathematics teacher educators’ noticing of pedagogical content knowledge on hierarchical classification of quadrilateral

Abstract

This study aims to investigate mathematics teacher educators’ (MTE) knowledge in noticing preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on the hierarchical classification of the quadrilateral. A multiple case study was conducted to analyze the responses of ten MTEs in an online moderated-forum group discussion (M-FGD) from their written work on the MTE-PCK test completed prior to the M-FGD. The PCK test consisted of two tasks: the task that examines MTEs’ knowledge to predict pre-service teachers’ reason in representing the hierarchical classification of quadrilateral in Venn diagrams, and the task that examines MTEs’ knowledge in making a flowchart as a recommendation to mathematics teacher to analyze the validity of quadrilateral classification. Results show that the MTEs indicate two considerations of noticing pre-service teachers’ PCK on the quadrilateral classification: by definition and properties of quadrilaterals and by the visual appearance of quadrilaterals. Despite this, 20% of them were indicated to perform a lack of understanding of the hierarchical classification of quadrilaterals, as indicated by invalid flowcharts of validating the hierarchical classification of the quadrilateral.