Evaluating Education: Analyzing Pre-Service Teachers’ Assessments in Light of Equity Pedagogy and Mathematical Practices
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Date
2019-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess pre-service teachers’ application of equity pedagogy and mathematical practices in their evaluation of children’s mathematical content knowledge and reasoning skills. This agenda is in response to a call from the national mathematics education research community to pursue such connections. In this study, the researchers utilized two tools: the Learning about Mathematics and Pedagogy (LAMP) survey and a series of reflective prompts. These tools were used to survey pre-service teachers (PSTs) from an Early Childhood Education program at a regional campus of a large Research I institution. The survey and reflective prompt results suggest that these PSTs struggled to incorporate certain aspects of equity pedagogy and mathematical practices in their assessments of children’s mathematical content knowledge and reasoning skills. The data collected suggests these PSTs are not instinctively choosing to seek out and give weight to the arguments of their own students. Instead, it appears that they are using a narrow perspective in approaching mathematical content as well as in interpreting their students’ logical reasoning without input from the students themselves. However, these results improved significantly upon a second administration of the survey and reflective prompts tool following a Math Methods course taken by the PSTs as part of their undergraduate program. We conclude that the PSTs’ initial perspective came as the result of an incomplete content knowledge, given they were more inclined to make equitable choices in their responses to students’ work when they themselves demonstrated a deeper understanding of the content that was being taught.
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Keywords
equity, mathematics, education, diversity, pedagogy, assessment