The role of opportunities to learn in early childhood teacher education from two perspectives: A multilevel model

Early childhood teacher education is considered crucial for the development of professional knowledge. However, little is known about the impacts of teacher educators, especially with respect to domain-specific knowledge in areas like early mathematics education. We investigated the relationship between opportunities to learn as reported by teacher educators and perceived by pre-service teachers and pre-service teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge, mathematics pedagogical content knowledge, and mathematical content knowledge. The sample comprised 909 pre-service teachers from two different teacher education tracks (vocational school vs. university) and their 43 teacher educators. The results provided the first empirical evidence that opportunities to learn reported by teacher educators are highly relevant for pre-service teachers’ knowledge. This strengthens calls to focus on the role of teacher educators in both research and practice.