Exploration of Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs in relation to Mathematics Teaching Activities in Classroom-based Setting

Abstract

This paper has beenconducted to determine future teachers’ mathematical beliefs and to explore therelationship between their mathematical beliefs and initial teaching practicein a classroom setting, in terms of how they design the content of teachingactivities, they employed the style of teaching in mathematics, and theyengaged with pupils. A collective case study approach was used for this studyso as to concentrate on a belief and belief in action association with numerousexamples. Pre-service teachers were observed using a variety of procedures toreveal qualitative data about their teaching practice during the school-basedpracticum, and were then requested to complete six open-ended questions formconcerning mathematical beliefs. The analysis of data revealed considerablecoherence among pre-service teachers’ beliefs in relation to teaching andlearning of mathematics and consistent associations between their beliefs andtheir teaching practices in a classroom-based setting. Although pre-serviceteacher’ accounts emphasized the use of contemporary approaches in mathematicsteaching to enhance and extend students’ learning of mathematics but they feltnot enough confident to integrate these ideas into teaching mathematics effectively.In addition, some teachers who held a learner-based mathematical beliefs butwere teaching mathematics in a classroom with traditional sense.