Literature Review

Abstract

Recently, an effort has been made to measure mathematics teachers’ knowledge needed for teaching even though there is more than 20 years of history in studying teachers’ knowledge. Shulman’s (1986) classification of subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and curriculum knowledge laid a foundation for the study of teacher knowledge. Drawing on Shulman’s framework, researchers have further refined and developed models to better describe and measure teacher knowledge needed for teaching (e.g., Ball et al., 2005; Krauss et al., 2008; Schmidt et al., 2007; Silverman & Thompson, 2008; Tatto et al., 2012). This literature review consists of two sections: teacher knowledge needed for teaching, and mathematics preparation of teachers in China and the U.S. In the first section, I reported the conceptualization of teacher knowledge for teaching in general and discussed the models for describing teacher knowledge for teaching mathematics in particular.