What Kind of Content Knowledge do Secondary Mathematics Teachers Need?

Abstract

The discrepancy between school and academic mathematics as well as the resulting problems for secondary mathematics teachers' content knowledge (CK) have been well known since Felix Klein pointed out the problem of so-called double discontinuity. However, even today, the field of mathematics education has no clear answer to the question as to what kind of profession-specific CK secondary mathematics teachers need and should be taught during the course of their teacher education. Hence, a model of professional CK for teaching secondary mathematics is required which takes into account the discrepancy between the academic mathematics that teachers learn at university and the school mathematics they teach in school. In order to characterize such a profession-specific CK, this theoretical paper traces and integrates different approaches to bridge this gap. Consequently, a construct called school-related content knowledge (SRCK) is introduced, which describes a profession-specific CK for teaching secondary mathematics concerning interrelations between academic and school mathematics. The conceptualization of this construct encompasses three facets that are illustrated by means of a corresponding operationalization. The distinction of SRCK from the construct of specialized content knowledge is discussed, as are emerging research questions.

Perceived relevance of university physics problems by pre-service physics teachers: personal constructs

“…Similar studies have been conducted for the specific group of pre-service teachers. In these studies, the course content was related to the content knowledge category that described the teacher-specific knowledge (Dreher, Lindmeier, Heinze, & Niemand, 2018;Riese et al, 2015;Woehlecke et al, 2017). Stäcker, Ropohl, Steffensky, and Friedrichs (2018) developed learning opportunities for pre-service chemistry teachers where, among others, a content analysis of an everyday phenomenon is reduced for teaching purposes using knowledge maps.…”

Systematizing Professional Knowledge of Medical Doctors and Teachers: Development of an Interdisciplinary Framework in the Context of Diagnostic Competences

“…However, these knowledge facets were not differentiated based on their type. Similar to COACTIV, a differentiation of the knowledge facets based on contexts was made [49,50]. In science, each facet was additionally divided into several types of knowledge (in physics; [27]) or cognitive processes (in biology; [48]).…”

“…Moreover, the possibility of transferring the results from educational sciences (with regard to the predictive power of different knowledge facets for successful instructional acting) to the domain of medical sciences has to be discussed. Finally, other content-related knowledge facets have been brought forward recently, for example, including technological-related facets such as technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) [68] or more differentiated facets such as SRCK [49], whose importance in either domain is currently unclear. Accordingly, the strict trichotomy of CK, PCK, and PK will have to be discussed and then theoretically and empirically researched in both domains.…”

Entwicklung eines fachspezifischen Kenntnistests zur Erfassung mathematischen Vorwissens von Bewerberinnen und Bewerbern auf ein Mathematik-Lehramtsstudium

“…Dass für eine Beschreibung von Entwicklungsverläufen im Studium evtl. andere theoretische Modelle des Fachwissens von Mathematik-Lehramtsstudierenden notwendig sind, diskutieren entsprechend aktuelle Arbeiten zu einem "differenzierten Modell des fachspezifischen Professionswissens von angehenden Mathematiklehrkräften" (Dreher et al 2018;Heinze et al 2016). Dennoch: Trotz dieser eindimensionalen Modellierung des Fachwissens von (angehenden) Mathematiklehrkräften in COAC-TIV und TEDS-M (bzw.…”