Helping Prospective Teachers to Understand Children's Mathematical Thinking

• Main Author: Hartman, Genevieve Louise
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: Cognitive psychology; Mathematics > Study and teaching; Mathematics > Study and teaching (Preschool); Teachers > Training of
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7916/D8VQ38N0

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two video-based interventions, one guided, the other non-guided, on pre-service early childhood education teachers' understanding of students' mathematical thinking. Five web-based lessons on various topics in children's mathematical development were created for this study. Each contained a short reading introducing a videotaped clinical interview of a young child performing a mathematical task. The unguided group then watched a 2-minute video, while the guided group watched the same video segmented into short clips and then answered open-ended questions at each break. The main goal was to examine the effectiveness of the use of videotaped clinical interviews in professional development. More specifically, I was interested in the types of experiences offered by the guided and unguided versions, as compared to those of the control group. The results of this study showed that both the guided- and unguided-video experiences were successful in changing the way prospective teachers interpreted children's mathematical thinking. While the results show it was possible to use videos to improve prospective teachers' interpretive abilities, it was not possible to improve their ability to apply the interpretations to developing appropriate teaching activities.