Coherence in mathematics teacher education

Abstract

A deficit of traditional teacher education, is the fragmentation of teachers' professional knowledge in single disciplines. While general measures from questionnaires are available, there is only little knowledge about student teachers' perception of the complex interplay of their study areas, i.e. their perception of coherence. The present interview study investigates student teachers' perception of coherence in mathematics teacher education. While recent studies report findings about coherence between theory and practice, we focus on coherence between mathematical content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. We firstly identify inductively fields of knowledge that student teachers consider as relevant for their future profession as mathematic teachers. By means of qualitative content analysis we confirmed this category system deductively. Secondly, we investigate existing or required coherence relations of these categories in teacher education. On the basis of these studies and further theoretical knowledge known from literature, we intend to develop a quantitative instrument to survey student teachers' perception of coherence in teaching.