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Mathematics-related teaching competence of Taiwanese primary future teachers: evidence from TEDS-M

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Abstract

This paper draws on data from the international TEDS-M study, organized by the IEA, and utilizes a conceptual framework describing the Taiwanese perspective of mathematics and mathematics teaching competences (MTCs) with regard to investigating the uniqueness and patterns of Taiwanese future primary teacher performance in the international context. The framework includes content-oriented and thought-oriented categories of mathematics competence. The latter category contains subcategories adopted and revised from (3rd Mediterranean conference on mathematical education. Hellenic Mathematical Society, Athens, 2003) the competence approach by Niss. Hsieh’s (Research on the development of the professional ability for teaching mathematics in the secondary school level (3/3). Taiwan: National Science Council, 2009) model is also adopted and revised to serve as an analytical framework, including four categories relating to MTCs, representations, language, and misconceptions or error procedures. This paper shows that in thought-oriented mathematics competences Taiwan and Singapore share a unique pattern of higher percent correct in competences related to formalization, abstraction, and operations in mathematics than in those related to the way of thinking, modelling and reasoning in and with mathematics. The paper also addresses weak teaching competences claimed in domestic studies, which conflict with the TEDS-M results. Namely, in contrary to the international trend, Taiwanese future primary teachers are weak at judging mathematics competences required by students to learn mathematical concepts or solve problems, and superior at diagnosing and dealing with student misconceptions and error procedures.

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Notes

  1. Niss’s original second category includes the ability to deal with and manage tools.

  2. This model uses the idea of unary operation in mathematics. An operator acts on an element in the domain to produce a new element in the range.

  3. The classification of items into different operations and kernels in Hsieh’s framework can be found in Table 2.

  4. As described in Sect. 2.1, competence includes concept, skills, and ability.

  5. There is another way to meet the IEA’s threshold for participation rate, namely, when both the institutional and the future teachers’ participation rates are greater than or equal to 85%.

  6. The combined participation rates of Chile and Poland were between 60 and 75%. Poland limited its participation to institutions with concurrent programs. Switzerland limited its participation to German-speaking regions. The United States limited its participation to public universities. Analyses for Norway were conducted by combining the two data sets available. The range of the participation rate for Norway cannot be confirmed yet.

  7. This ratio also corresponds roughly to the ratio of females to males of in-service primary teachers in Taiwan in the year of the survey.

  8. The data sets used in this paper are the TEDS-M released data sets for national research coordinators: TEDS_MS_NRC-USE_IDB_20091209_v30. The final TEDS-M data sets include one more score than used in this paper.

  9. The statement might look like “Indicate whether each of the following students’ responses is correct or not”.

  10. Item examples of TMC-TQ and TMC-ML can be found in Sects. 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 in this paper.

  11. Item examples of MTC-C and MTC-M can be found in Sects. 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 in this paper.

  12. For example, a response with a code 20 or 21 was scored 2 points, whereas a code 10 or 11 was scored 1 point.

  13. These means were computed by TEDS-M. German and Russian means in MPCK were higher than the international mean, though not significantly. They are regarded as higher achieving countries in this paper.

  14. Singapore achieved the same as Taiwan in MPCK.

  15. The situation and units of the test problem #206(a) employed a sense of a “speed” concept.

  16. This type of answer is incorrect because preservation of length is developed earlier than length measurement.

  17. This type of answer is incorrect because teachers will usually not teach advanced concepts or develop abilities in other fields at the time they teach length measurement.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the following: the IEA, the International Study Center at Michigan State University, the Data Processing Center, the ACER, the U.S. NSF, the Taiwan TEDS-M team, and all TEDS-M national research coordinators for sponsoring the international study and providing information and data. We also acknowledge Sarah-Jane Patterson for her assistance with editing the paper. Taiwan TEDS-M 2008 was supported by the National Science Council and Ministry of Education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Feng-Jui Hsieh & Ting-Ying Wang

  2. National Hsinchu University of Education, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    Pi-Jen Lin

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  1. Feng-Jui Hsieh
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Correspondence to Feng-Jui Hsieh.

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The analysis prepared for this report and the views expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies or the IEA.

This article is based on the Taiwan TEDS-M 2008 study conducted by the National Research Center of Taiwan located at National Taiwan Normal University.

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Hsieh, FJ., Lin, PJ. & Wang, TY. Mathematics-related teaching competence of Taiwanese primary future teachers: evidence from TEDS-M. ZDM Mathematics Education 44, 277–292 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-011-0377-7

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