Clustering Analysis on Teachers’ Perceptions of Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge

The purpose of this study is to cluster the perceptions of mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) for teachers. The subject is 259 primary school teachers in Taiwan. This study constructs dimensions of MPCK according to the review and conclusions of literature. The MPCK assessment includes six dimensions, which are mathematics content knowledge (MCK), students’ cognition knowledge (SCK), mathematics instruction knowledge (MIK), mathematics instruction practice (MIP), mathematics assessment knowledge (MAK) and teacher professional responsibility (TPR). The MPCK questionnaire is 4-points Likert scale and its reliability and validity are acceptable. Fuzzy clustering is adopted to cluster the subject based on these six dimensions. Results show that all teachers could be properly classified into six clusters. Each cluster has its own features of mathematics pedagogical content knowledge. There are also significantly differences in the dimensional scores among clusters. Besides, teachers who have more years of in-service tend to have higher dimensional scores on MPCK. These results could provide references for cultivating pre-service teachers and professional promotion for in-service teachers. Based on the findings of this study, some suggestions and recommendations are discussed for future research.