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Student teachers' subject matter knowledge within the domain of area measurement

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Abstract

This paper describes a research project whose major aim was to evaluate first-year teacher education students' understanding of subject matter knowledge in the domain of area measurement. In contrast to many previous approaches to evaluating teacher education students' subject matter knowledge, the approach adopted in this study not only focused on the student teachers' substantive knowledge but also on their knowledge about the nature and discourse of mathematics, their knowledge about mathematics in society and their dispositions towards mathematics. To this end, each student was clinically interviewed whilst engaged on a set of eight tasks that were developed for the study. The development of the tasks was a major component of the study and this is described in detail. The results of the tasks are given and the paper concludes with a discussion of the findings. This discussion focuses primarily on the implications that these results have for preservice mathematics education courses.

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Baturo, A., Nason, R. Student teachers' subject matter knowledge within the domain of area measurement. Educ Stud Math 31, 235–268 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00376322

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