How Education Affects Mathematics Teachers' Knowledge: Unpacking Selected Aspects of Teacher Knowledge

Background:It is no surprise that all mathematics teacher education programs attempt to increase future teachers’ knowledge, since teachers’ knowledge has an effect not only on their teaching but also on their students’ achievements. However, measuring the relationship between teachers’ knowledge and their education is overly demanding.Material and methods:In this study we unpacked a selection of aspects of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) and created a 72-item survey that would measure teacher educators’ and graduated teachers’ perceptions of what graduated teachers have learned well or less well during teacher education. The data were collected under the auspices of the University of Eastern Finland.Results:According to the results, Subject matter knowledge and Pedagogical content knowledge receive similar emphases in the teacher education program, but certain fields of teacher knowledge, such as Common content knowledge, receive a greater emphasis than others.Conclusions:The approach described here provides a simple way of investigating this demanding phenomenon, and hence the limitations and the possibilities of the study will be discussed in detail.