Proposal for the 15th ICMI study „The professional edcuation and development of teachers of mathematics“; strand I: “Programs of teacher education”, phase: “initial teacher education”; type of presentation: “paper”
The aims of the research project presented in the following are: (a) to capture the cultural context of mathematics teacher education, (b) to develop a typology of context factors and (c) to link them to student achievement in mathematics. The study is a comparative inquiry across eight countries (Bulgaria, England, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States) carried out as a component of a cross-cultural study on teacher education (P-TEDS “Developing subject-matter knowledge in mathematics middle school teachers”). Through literature reviews, a focus group interview and qualitative analyses dimensions and sub-dimensions are identified which represent important cultural context factors of mathematics teacher education. Across those eight countries patterns are identified which are connected to student achievement in mathematics. Finally, the chances and limits of the results are discussed.
Sigrid Blömeke (Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany)
How efficient is the teacher education of mathematics teachers?
Typology of cultural context factors and their connection to student achievement
Recently a lot of research has been carried out on the structure and organization of teacher education (OECD 2004a, 2004b, Eurydice 2002, 2003, 2004). This research reflects a lot of progress in creating a common language for talking about school- and teacher-related issues across countries. However, this research has not been content related. If one looks at mathematics – as an academic discipline and as a school subject – one can say that mathematics on the one hand is probably the most internationalized parts of school and teacher education (Freudenthal 1975, Robitaille & Travers 1992, Clarke 2003) – especially because of the early ICME foundation (Atweh, Clarkson & Nebres 2002, S. 192ff.). The consequence is that one can discover a lot of commonalities in mathematics at school all over the world nowadays (Bishop 1991). Nevertheless, if one looks closer into the details, it is also obvious that mathematics is a context-related subject (Leung 1995, 2001, Leung & Park 2003). In addition, we have to notice serious research deficits in the field of mathematics teacher education (Krainer, Goffree & Berger 1999, S. 7).
In light of this background, the aims of the research project presented in the following are: (a) to capture the cultural context of mathematics teacher education, (b) to develop a typology of context factors and (c) to link them to student achievement in mathematics. The results will be part of a model of the effectiveness of mathematics teacher education.
Design and research methods
The study is a comparative inquiry across eight countries. It focuses on teacher education of mathematics teachers for middle schools. The eight countries are Bulgaria, England, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. They represent the whole range of TIMSS and PISA results with South Korea and Taiwan consistently performing very well, Bulgaria and England performing well, Germany, Italy and the United States performing poorly and Mexico performing very poorly.
The first research step consists of a literature review carried out to define core structural characteristics of the teacher-education system in those eight countries. In a second step a focus-group interview of teacher-education experts from those eight countries is analyzed.[1] In this interview macro-level factors influencing mathematics teacher education were discussed. The results were validated and complemented through a further literature review, namely of cross-cultural research on teacher education, school and societal questions. In a third step scales for the context factors will be presented by which countries can be brought into an order. Finally, patterns are identified by a qualitative “cluster analysis”, and those clusters will be linked to student achievement in TIMSS and PISA studies.
First Results
The following dimensions and sub-dimensions could be identified as important cultural context factors of mathematics teacher education. (In Brazil all scales will be presented.):
(1) Working conditions
§ Teacher Salary (ratio of teacher salaries and GNP)
§ Yearly work load (number of teaching hours)
(2) Social status of mathematics teachers
§ Social status of the teaching profession
§ Social status of mathematics
§ Demand for teacher education places
§ Selectivity of teacher education
(3) Cultural rationales
§ Rationale of the society (extent of individualism in the economy, extent of individualism in politics)
§ Rationale of the educational system (locus of decision making, freedom of teachers to make changes)
§ Extent of deregulation in the education system
(4) Rationale of teacher education
§ Goals of schooling (extent of possibilities to choose subjects)
§ Breadth of teacher tasks
§ Breadth of teacher education (number of subjects)
(5) Organization of teacher education
§ Relationship of theory and practice (extent of knowledge integration)
§ Structure of teacher education (extent of integration)
Diagram 1: Example for sub-dimensions of context factors and their scaling
As expected it is possible to identify patterns, e.g. a strong correlation between goals of schooling, goals of teacher education and content of teacher education. What is more surprising is that – if one considers all the dimensions and sub-dimensions mentioned above – it is not the East-Asian countries and the Anglo-Saxon countries which represent opposite types of teacher-education cultures but the East-Asian countries and the European countries, especially Germany. These countries don’t share any characteristic in teacher education in those dimensions.
A linkage of teacher-education types with TIMSS and PISA results shows that possibly some dimensions are more important than others regarding the efficacy of the teacher-education system. The most important dimensions seem to be the extent of deregulation in the educational system (with a positive influence of regulation features) and the social status of maths teachers (with a positive influence of high social status of the teaching profession and high social status of mathematics which lead to a high demand for teacher-education places in mathematics which once again leads to a high selectivity of the teacher-education system). Against it, teachers’ working conditions seem to be almost insignificant.
Discussion
The study can be seen as a first step towards an empirical based theory of teacher-education efficacy in the field of mathematics. The results have to be checked in a large-scale study which includes more countries.
Regarding the construct “cultural context”, several context levels have to be distinguished: societal values without direct relation to teacher education, societal values related to the field of education in general, and societal values related to the field of mathematics. It is an open question whether we can talk about national culture nowadays at all (Leung 1999, Clarke 2002, S. 7, Knipping 2003, S. 290).
The patters which can be identified differ from the traditional view of East-Asian countries vs. Anglo-Saxon countries (Stevenson 1987, Leung 2001). Regarding those countries more communality can be discovered than expected whereas the European countries seem to be much more distant to the East-Asian countries.
Since the focus of the study was on teacher education it has to be mentioned that possibly several variables mediate the influence of teacher education on student achievement. One of the most important is probably teacher knowledge and teacher performance. Cross-national research indicates that we have cultural characteristics in this field, too (Seeger, Voigt & Waschescio 1998, Alexander, Broadfoot & Phillips 1999, Pepin 1999, Stigler et al. 1999, Hiebert et al. 2003).
References
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Dr. Sigrid Blömeke, Full Professor of General Education and Instructional Research at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Research areas: Teacher education, teaching and learning with new media, international comparisons of educational issues.
[1] The focus-group interview was carried out by William S. Schmidt and M. Teresa Tatto, principal investigators of the P-TEDS project “Devleoping subject-matter knowledge in mathematics middle school teachers. A cross-national study of teacher preparation”, funded by the NSF-ROLE (REC-0231886). It took place in Rome in June 2004 and lasted for two days. P-TEDS is a developmental study conceptualizing indicators and developing instruments to use in a following large-scale study on teacher education (TEDS-M “IEA First teacher education study in mathematics).