Search Results (139)

This study examines pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching real-world problems and mathematical modelling. Using a quantitative design, it investigates variation in self-efficacy between primary and special education pre-service teachers across different competence facets. The findings reveal a differentiated, domain-specific pattern of self-efficacy rather than uniform differences between groups. Special education pre-service teachers reported higher self-efficacy in pedagogical content knowledge and task design and differentiation, whereas no significant differences emerged for situation-specific skills and instructional design and enactment. The study contributes to a more differentiated understanding of modelling-related self-efficacy by showing that domain specificity may also operate within a specific area of mathematics teaching. It highlights the relevance of considering different competence facets in teacher education for inclusive mathematics classrooms. Full article

Pre-service mathematics teachers engage with AI as both geometry learners and future teachers, yet domain-specific instruments for measuring this usage remain scarce. This study developed and validated the AI Usage in Geometry Learning Scale (AIGLS) and compared usage between two Indonesian teacher-education institutions. A comparative survey covered 178 pre-service mathematics teachers at Universitas Negeri Makassar (UNM, n = 89) and Universitas Negeri Jakarta (UNJ, n = 89). The AIGLS operationalises five dimensions: Conceptual Understanding Support, Problem-Solving Assistance, Geometric Visualisation, Pedagogical Readiness, and Critical Evaluation of AI. A ten-expert panel established content validity (CVI = 0.976). Item analysis excluded all five negatively worded items; all analyses therefore used the final 20-item scale, which showed good full-scale (Cronbach’s α = 0.873) and subscale (α = 0.591–0.810) reliability. ChatGPT was the dominant tool (96.6%), and UNM reported significantly higher usage intensity than UNJ (χ²(4) = 27.917, p < 0.001). Mann–Whitney U tests with Bonferroni correction confirmed UNM scored higher overall (U = 4749.5, p = 0.022, r_rb = −0.20), with Geometric Visualisation showing the largest institutional gap (r_rb = −0.38, medium effect). The validated AIGLS supports measuring AI usage in geometry teacher preparation and informs AI-literacy policy. Full article

This study investigates how pre-service primary education teachers (PSTs) develop geometric thinking when exposed to an instructional approach based on van Hiele’s theory. Ninety undergraduate students were divided into experimental and control groups and were assessed before and after a semester of Euclidean geometry instruction. Using mixed-methods analysis, the study examined participants’ initial levels of geometric thinking, their progression over time, and the comparative impact of traditional and van Hiele-based instruction. Both groups began with similarly limited geometric understanding and showed improvement, yet only the experimental group achieved statistically significant gains. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of van Hiele-based instruction in strengthening conceptual understanding and supporting PSTs’ transition from procedural school mathematics to the deductive structure of university geometry. By structuring learning through van Hiele’s levels of thinking and five phases of learning, the instructional approach provided accessible entry points, systematic scaffolding, and opportunities for building coherent conceptual networks. The results suggest that integrating van Hiele-informed approaches into tertiary mathematics courses can support the development of robust geometric thinking and better prepare PSTs for future teaching of geometry. Full article

Digital storytelling is widely used in education as a multimodal design practice that foregrounds creator agency and audience awareness. Generative AI (GenAI) expands the speed and range of story production but also raises questions about how educators retain pedagogical control over generated content. This exploratory qualitative study used cross-case workflow analysis to examine how 27 pre-service early childhood educators in Hong Kong designed GenAI-mediated mathematics storybooks. Data included video-recorded process presentations, records of interactions with ChatGPT (GPT-5) and Krea 2, and completed storybooks. Analysis traced participant decisions across planning, generation, curation, and integration, focusing on GenAI-related affordance uptake, recurring workflow patterns, and tensions among technical innovation, ethical accountability, and cultural impact. Findings show that participants commonly used GenAI to steer generation through pedagogical constraints; expand narrative and visual alternatives; and select, reject, or revise generated materials. Two recurring process patterns were identified: constraint-guided planning-to-generation, in which pedagogical requirements were established early and used to guide subsequent decisions, and exploration-to-selection, in which participants generated and compared alternatives before progressively stabilizing a preferred direction. Across both patterns, tensions were particularly evident during curation and integration, when participants balanced efficiency with sustained oversight, creative variation with pedagogical coherence, and generic outputs with local contextual fit. The findings show that GenAI-mediated storybook creation is not simply a process of generating text and images, but a pedagogical workflow in which pre-service teachers exercise agency through the critical selection, revision, and integration of AI-generated materials. Implications are discussed for teacher education, AI literacy, and the design of scalable support for teachers’ use of GenAI. Full article

Diagnostic competence is central to primary mathematics teacher education but existing approaches tend to depend on individual personnel and module structures, limiting their sustainability. This study combines a research-informed design approach with quasi-experimental intervention cycles: a fully asynchronous, video-based Moodle self-study module was developed to foster diagnostic competence in early arithmetic, consistently grounded in an empirically validated cognitive-developmental model. The module was implemented and iteratively refined across four phases—an in-service teacher workshop, a module pilot, and two quasi-experimental intervention cycles with pre-service primary teachers, including matched control groups. Across phases, the most consistent finding was a significant pre–post improvement in diagnostic accuracy for a below-average-performing pupil profile in the intervention group, while effects for average- and above-average profiles were less uniform. Log-data analyses showed that actual engagement with video vignettes, rather than structural completion, was the active ingredient of learning gains. Three design principles are proposed: model-based mathematical design, vertical connection of in-service and pre-service contexts, and guided asynchronous self-study with structured feedback. The study provides promising, context-bound evidence that a theoretically grounded, personnel-independent digital module can be integrated sustainably into primary teacher education and can foster diagnostic accuracy under the institutional and sample conditions investigated, while yielding initial design knowledge for comparable development efforts. Full article

This study explores the introduction of investigative approaches to preservice mathematics teachers in countries where traditional exercise-oriented teaching remains dominant despite ongoing educational reforms promoting student-centered, competency-based learning. The Albanian mathematics education is taken as a case study representative of many other countries coming from highly structured teacher-centered mathematics education systems to more progressive models, where this implementation gap persists, and where curriculum changes are not always accompanied by attention to the local situations. The purpose of the study is to examine the characteristics of critical mathematical competence exhibited by preservice teachers when they engage in investigative activities and to identify the possibilities and barriers they perceive. A qualitative case study was conducted at an Albanian university with students of the master’s program in mathematics teacher education. The intervention included pattern investigations, mathematical modelling tasks, and an open-ended investigative task on food security. Data consisted of written reflections, group work recordings, written assignments, and interviews. The results show that participants exhibited mathematical, technological, and, to some extent, reflective knowing. They used mathematics to explore real-world problems about food security, evaluated data sources, and reflected on their validity. At the same time, they faced several barriers, including traditional orientations about mathematics teaching and lack of experience with investigative approaches, uncertainty when working with open-ended tasks, concerns about the reliability of data sources, and time constraints. Participants also identified important possibilities, such as student engagement, collaboration, critical thinking, and stronger connections between mathematics and real-life contexts. The study highlights both the potential and the complexity of integrating investigative approaches into mathematics teacher education in Albania, but also to other countries undergoing similar curricular reforms. Full article

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) resources and robotics tools in education is considered vital for interdisciplinary fields to enhance the quality of the teaching and learning process. It also helps transform assessment techniques and revolutionize the whole pedagogical setting of science teacher education, in particular, AI and robotics integration in the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects’ courses at the primary level. In this study, a scoping review was conducted involving seventeen peer-reviewed research papers published from 2021 to 2025. Efforts are being made to find the current perceptions and practices of preservice teachers (PSTs) at the primary level (Years 1–6; ages 6–12 in the Australian context) regarding the use of AI and robotics resources, for example, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), foundational robotics and AI-driven robotics in teaching STEM subjects. Findings indicate that there was a significant gap in primary PSTs’ perspectives regarding their pedagogical practices to integrate STEM. As such, this influences future teachers’ knowledge, understanding, AI acceptance, and attitude toward the integration of smart AI and robotics resources in STEM classrooms. Policymakers and teachers’ education providers should align advanced technological AI resources and robotics applications with STEM curriculum guidelines and preservice teachers’ professional training programs within primary school education. Full article

Values are cultural tools that pre-service teachers can use in situations that require discernment and integrity. Promoting an axiological framework in the training of future educators is an urgent necessity for coexistence in today’s world. This study aimed to understand the preferences and meanings that third-year students studying to become primary school teachers of mathematics, Spanish, and English as a foreign language attribute to values, as well as how values are transmitted in degree programs and at selected universities. An exploratory case study was used as the research design. Thirty-two students were selected using purposive sampling until theoretical saturation was reached. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the participants. Reflective thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings revealed three themes: students’ value preferences are conditioned by their pedagogical training; values, as constructions of shared meaning, are conceived as normative guidelines that orient human action in all its dimensions; and teacher educators transmit values linked to the pedagogical role and teacher identity, while universities emphasize moral values oriented toward professional development, thus articulating two complementary levels of training. The study provides an empirical framework for moving from spontaneous value education to intentional communication, both in teacher training curricula and in the educational activities of each university. Full article

There is limited understanding regarding whether and how teachers’ talent beliefs evolve across career stages. While most prior research conceptualizes talent beliefs across domains, emerging frameworks emphasize field-specific talent beliefs. An established multidimensional model of talent beliefs provides a theoretically grounded structure for capturing these domain-specific perceptions. Yet comparative evidence across teacher career stages remains limited. Our study examines if verbal and mathematical talent beliefs among in-service teachers and pre-service teachers differ in terms of sources, structure and levels. A total of 307 in-service teachers and 215 pre-service teachers completed validated six-dimensional talent beliefs instruments for both domains and reported sources of their beliefs. Participants—especially pre-service teachers—most strongly attributed their talent beliefs to personal school experiences, while educational science and subject-didactic coursework played a marginal role. Both the mathematical and verbal talent belief scales demonstrated configural and metric invariance, supporting equivalent factor structures and factor loadings across pre-service teachers and in-service teachers. Latent mean comparisons showed that pre-service teachers hold systematically different talent beliefs in comparison to in-service teachers. In-service teachers emphasize talent beliefs concerning domain-specific skills and, for verbal talent, passion—consistent with contemporary talent development frameworks—whereas pre-service teachers focus on external teacher influence and, for mathematical talent, on internal factors. These findings reinforce theoretical claims that talent beliefs are experience-sensitive, multidimensional constructs shaped through socialization in educational contexts. Teacher (further) education should deliberately address the dominance of personal schooling experiences by fostering structured reflection, explicitly targeting belief formation in practice-based courses, and ensuring coherence between higher-education instruction and school-based experiences. Teachers’ impact on their students’ talent development should especially be reflected in further education, since in-service teachers assess their own influence as lower than pre-service teachers do; additionally, passion as a key driver of talent development and the relevance of talent domains should already be highlighted in initial teacher education. Full article

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has emerged as a key priority in contemporary education systems, emphasizing the need to equip learners with the knowledge and competencies required to address complex environmental and societal challenges. Mathematics education can play an important role in achieving these goals by enabling students to analyse data, interpret real-world problems, and develop critical thinking skills related to sustainability issues. However, despite the growing interest in sustainability-oriented mathematics education, limited empirical evidence exists on how structured mathematical modelling interventions influence pre-service primary teachers’ perceptions, modelling orientation, and confidence in designing sustainability-based mathematics lessons. This study investigates the impact of sustainability-oriented mathematical modelling activities on pre-service primary teachers’ perceptions of integrating sustainability into mathematics education. The study employed a quasi-experimental design involving 68 pre-service primary teachers enrolled in a mathematics education course at a university. Participants engaged in a six-week intervention consisting of modelling activities based on real-world sustainability contexts, including water consumption, energy use, waste management, and sustainable transportation. Data were collected using a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire examining participants’ perceptions of sustainability integration, mathematical modelling, and teaching confidence. Statistical analyses, including reliability analysis, descriptive statistics, paired-sample t-tests, effect size estimates, and correlation analysis, as well as multiple regression analysis, were conducted to examine the impact of the intervention. The results indicate significant improvements in participants’ perceptions of sustainability-oriented mathematics teaching and their confidence in designing modelling-based sustainability activities. The largest improvement was observed in teaching confidence, while mathematical modelling perception emerged as a significant predictor of teaching confidence. The findings suggest that mathematical modelling can serve as an effective pedagogical approach for integrating sustainability topics into mathematics education and preparing future teachers to connect mathematical reasoning with real-world environmental challenges. The study contributes to the growing body of research at the intersection of mathematics education, teacher education, and sustainability education by providing empirical evidence on the potential of modelling-based learning for supporting sustainability-oriented teaching practices. More specifically, it shows how mathematical modelling can function as a concrete pedagogical mechanism for translating Education for Sustainable Development into primary mathematics teacher education. Full article

Understanding rate of change requires reasoning about measurable quantities and how one quantity changes relative to another. To support this kind of reasoning, teachers should develop the ability to notice students’ quantitative and covariational reasoning. This study examines how preservice teachers (PSTs) attend to, interpret, and respond to students’ quantitative and covariational reasoning in video-based analyses of water-filling rate-of-change tasks. Drawing on relevant research, professional noticing is examined through the lenses of quantitative reasoning and covariational reasoning. Using a design-based qualitative approach, secondary PSTs participated in structured analyses of students’ problem-solving discussions related to rate of change. Data were collected across eight semi-structured sessions. This study reports qualitative analyses from two sessions (Sessions 1 and 2) that focused on rate of change. Findings show that PSTs’ initial attending shifted from perceptual task features (e.g., pouring speed, references to time) toward identification of measurable quantities, recognition of coordination between height and volume, and comparison of equal volume increments. PSTs’ interpretations progressed from recognizing secondary-variable coordination to identifying direct covariation, and their instructional responses became more targeted and content-specific. However, challenges persisted in interpreting students’ informal and visually mediated covariational reasoning. This study contributes to research on professional noticing by integrating quantitative and covariational reasoning as analytic lenses and highlighting implications for teacher preparation in calculus education. Full article

This study proposes an innovative instructional approach to promote scientific literacy by integrating the Nature of Science and the Nature of Scientific Inquiry with experimental practice and the history of physics. The aim is to foster a deep understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed and to promote informed trust in science. Using an explicit and reflective methodology, the intervention combines experimental activities with historical reflection. The core of the learning sequence is the experimental reconstruction of Galileo’s studies on falling bodies, based on the historical manuscript folio 116v, an original document that provides the empirical evidence for the law of falling bodies, illustrating the transition from raw experimental data to mathematical formalization. Through this activity, students engage with key epistemic aspects of scientific practice, including the management of uncertainty—distinguished into statistical/aleatory and structural/epistemic forms—the probabilistic nature of scientific knowledge, the predictive power of models and theories, and the underdetermination of scientific theories. Additional themes addressed include the role of thought experiments, the importance of communicating results for scrutiny and validation, the function of models as mediators between theory and phenomena, and the process of de-idealization. The study also challenges the persistent myth of a single, linear “scientific method,” highlighting instead the theory-laden character of scientific inquiry and the central role of the scientific community. This dimension is explored through the historical comparison between Galileo and Mersenne, which illustrates elements of the scientific ethos and the role of peer review as a mechanism for the correction and refinement of knowledge. The results obtained with pre-service teachers, with whom this instructional sequence was implemented, indicate that this contextualized approach facilitates the overcoming of a view of science as a set of absolute truths. Instead, it promotes a more mature understanding of science as a dynamic, provisional, and self-correcting human enterprise, while equipping future citizens with the critical tools necessary to navigate the challenges of the twenty-first century. Full article

This study developed and validated a curriculum-aligned instrument to assess preservice primary teachers’ geometric reasoning skills. Addressing the limited availability of domain-specific tools in teacher education research, the study examined preservice teachers’ conceptual strengths and weaknesses across key geometry domains relevant to primary mathematics teaching. A two-phase quantitative research design was employed. In Study 1, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Item Response Theory (IRT) were used to evaluate the psychometric properties of the instrument with a sample of 221 preservice teachers, providing evidence of construct validity and internal consistency. Geometric reasoning was conceptualised as a four-factor structure comprising Conceptualisation of Geometric Properties (GP), Geometric Transformation Reasoning (GT), Reasoning with Representations of Three-Dimensional Objects (RE), and Measurement Reasoning (MS). In Study 2, the validated Geometric Reasoning Test (GRT) was administered to a larger sample of 406 preservice primary teachers from three education colleges in Myanmar. Descriptive statistics and group comparisons were conducted using Welch’s t-tests and Welch’s ANOVA to examine differences by gender, year level, and institution. The findings indicate that preservice primary teachers’ geometric reasoning remains underdeveloped across training stages, highlighting the need for greater emphasis on geometry and spatial reasoning in teacher education. Full article

The purpose of this research is to understand how to better equip pre-service teachers (PSTs) to engage marginalized learners and implement culturally responsive teaching (CRT) practices in elementary Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education. This was attempted through a module on CRT and a STEAM Biography assignment, which aimed to heighten teacher candidates’ awareness of the contributions of individuals from marginalized/underrepresented groups, generate discourse on equitable teaching practices, and foster culturally responsive teaching practices. This research study examines data collected by the researchers, who also served as course creators and instructors, from teacher candidate participants enrolled in a STEAM methods course in which this assignment was implemented. Data were collected through a survey instrument and analyzed using content analysis methodology (qualitative and quantitative). Preliminary findings suggest that PSTs developed strong emerging equity-oriented mindsets and recognized the importance of belongingness and connection to meet the needs of all learners. In addition, since most PSTs reported the need for more practical CRT examples for use in their future classrooms, the biography assignment helped to foster the development of positive dispositions toward culturally responsive teaching in the STEAM disciplines. Full article

The aim of this study is to investigate the skills of pre-service mathematics teachers in transforming between algebraic and graphical representations of one- and two-variable relations. This study adopted a qualitative research approach and was designed as a case study. The participants comprised 85 second-year pre-service mathematics teachers enrolled in the department of primary school mathematics education at two state universities in Türkiye. Data was collected in two consecutive phases. In the first phase, the Algebraic-Graphical Representation Skill Form (AGRSF) was administered to the pre-service teachers. The AGRSF included activities that required pre-service teachers to match given graphical representations with their corresponding algebraic expressions and to sketch the graphs of algebraically defined relations. In the second phase, the opinions of eight pre-service teachers were taken with the help of Interview Form (IF). Descriptive analysis was used in the analysis of the data. The findings revealed that pre-service teachers were more proficient in performing matching and graphing tasks involving one-variable relations compared to two-variable relations. It was concluded that the primary source of difficulty in two-variable relations stemmed from negative transfers from one-variable relation experiences. The underlying causes of these negative transfers were examined in detail, and instructional recommendations were proposed to facilitate positive transfers. Full article