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What Do Mathematics Teacher Educators Need to Know? Reflections Emerging from the Content of Mathematics Teacher Education

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The Learning and Development of Mathematics Teacher Educators

Part of the book series: Research in Mathematics Education ((RME))

Abstract

Mathematics teacher educators’ knowledge plays a central role in mathematics teacher education. Assuming the seminal orientations of Shulman’s work, as well as the last decades of discussion and research on the content of mathematics teacher education, we present a discussion of several domains of mathematics teacher educators’ knowledge. We start discussing the differences between the knowledge of teachers and MTEs, focusing on mathematical knowledge and pedagogical knowledge related to mathematics. We continue highlighting the complexity of the knowledge required for MTEs in order to foster the development of mathematics teaching practices and skills, as well as the knowledge needed to contribute to the building of a professional identity by (prospective) teachers. The prior elements conform to the content knowledge of the MTE, allowing us to elaborate on the elements that integrate MTEs’ pedagogical content knowledge. We finish sharing some reflections about different profiles of teacher educators related to their knowledge.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This framework elaborates on Shulman’s (1986) and Ball et al.’s (2008) conceptualisations of teacher knowledge, proposing an intrinsic approach towards specialisation (Scheiner, Montes, Godino, Carrillo, & Pino-Fan, 2019). Carrillo et al.’s (2018) framework proposes a structuration of content knowledge in three subdomains – knowledge of topics, knowledge of the structure of mathematics and knowledge of the practice of mathematics – and PCK in another three subdomains, knowledge of mathematics teaching, knowledge of the features of the learning of mathematics and knowledge of mathematics learning standards.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Benemérita Universidad de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico

    Dinazar Escudero-Ávila

  2. Universidad de Huelva, Huelva, Spain

    Miguel Montes & Luis Carlos Contreras

Authors
  1. Dinazar Escudero-Ávila
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  2. Miguel Montes
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  3. Luis Carlos Contreras
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Correspondence to Miguel Montes .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Merrilyn Goos

  2. School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Kim Beswick

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Escudero-Ávila, D., Montes, M., Contreras, L.C. (2021). What Do Mathematics Teacher Educators Need to Know? Reflections Emerging from the Content of Mathematics Teacher Education. In: Goos, M., Beswick, K. (eds) The Learning and Development of Mathematics Teacher Educators. Research in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62408-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62408-8_2

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