Table 1 - uploaded by Kim Beswick
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This paper reports on the impact of a brief professional learning program for K-8 teachers of mathematics, on teachers' beliefs about effective numeracy teaching strategies and appropriate goals of numeracy teaching, for students with mathematics learning difficulties and for students generally. Evaluation data indicated that the teachers finished...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... program thus provided participants with specific ideas relating to teaching mathematics topics that they considered problematic yet crucial to the development of numeracy, as well as opportunities to discuss a range of issues related to the program's aims. The topics and issues nominated by the participants and addressed (however briefly) by the program are shown in Table 1. Asterisked items were treated in somewhat more detail than the others and many of the issues raised were recurrent themes in the teachers' discussions as various topics were addressed. ...
Citations
... These differences were statistically significant. This is consistent with other research on teachers' beliefs about the capabilities of students with disabilities (Beswick, 2005) and demonstrates teachers need support to provide access to the general education curriculum for CWD (Courtade et al., 2012;Olson et al., 2016). ...
Early mathematics skills are predictive of later achievement, but there is evidence teachers generally provide little
mathematics instruction in preschool classrooms. We conducted this survey study to better understand teachers’ reported
beliefs about their own mathematics skills, expectations, and practices for children with and without disabilities, and the
impact of these reported beliefs and practices on the perceived effectiveness of their instruction. We found teachers had
less confidence in their own mathematics skills than their mathematics teaching abilities and had differing expectations
for children with and without disabilities. Their beliefs about their own mathematics abilities predicted their perceived
effectiveness for typically developing children only, but their beliefs about their teaching abilities predicted their perceived
effectiveness for children with and without disabilities. Implications include the need to better prepare and support
teachers to teach mathematics to all children and collect data from varied sources on teachers’ practices.
... Teachers' activities in the classrooms are creations of their beliefs (Zakaria & Maat, 2012) with an argument regarding the constancies amid teachers' practices and their beliefs. This issue is somehow complex as some authors have found consistency between teachers' beliefs and classroom practices (Peterson, Fennema, Carpenter & Loef, 1989;Kupari, 2003), while other studies agreed to the contradictions between beliefs and practices (Brown, 1986;Beswick, 2005) in mathematics education. Teachers' mathematics beliefs are affected by prior experiences at school, teachers' present practice and teacher education courses (Raymond, 1993) in which teachers' beliefs influence students' learning of mathematics (Kagan, 1992) and consequently affect students' perceptions of mathematics (Yesil-Dagli, Lake & Jones, 2010). ...
... Swan's diagnostic questionnaire interrogates the idea of three preferred "orientations" for teachingnamely transmission, discovery, and connectionistfirst discussed by Askew et al. (1997), as mentioned in the literature review. Teacher beliefs and attitudes are notoriously difficult to influence in any significant way, as the research has shown (Beswick, 2005(Beswick, , 2006Grootenboer, 2008;Goldin, Rosken, & Torner, 2009;Hurrell, 2013). This was largely seen to be true in this study also. ...
This paper discusses the results of a three-year mixed methods study into the effectiveness of a mathematics education unit. This was written for both pre-service primary education students and re-training in-service teachers, to prepare them for the teaching of pre-algebra and early algebra. The unit was taught rom 2013 to 2015 inclusively in a School of Education setting of a university in an Australian capital city. Focusing on the Number and Algebra strand in the Australian Curriculum, its purpose was to better prepare some novice teachers through modelling a more coherent approach to mathematics teaching. The unit 's genesis lies in the author 's belief that many mathematics teachers conduct their classes in isolated "pockets" of instruction that are not sufficiently informed by a broader, connected understanding of the mathematics. The unit was also prepared as a contribution to the recent call by the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers for more targeted initiatives to combat the decrease of STEM skills in our schools (AAMT, 2014). Results from the analysis of this study suggest that there might be much to be gained from this new approach.
... The report highlighted shortcomings in the transfer of policy level commitments to equity and inclusion into practice. In the area of mathematics, there is evidence that teachers do not regard curricula that emphasise conceptual understanding as appropriate for students with learning difficulties (Beswick, 2005), however De Geest, Watson & Prestage (2003) demonstrated that low achieving students can engage in the kinds of mathematical thinking usually associated with higher achieving students. Such findings suggest that the goals of equity and inclusion policies are indeed attainable and worth pursuing in the context of ambitious or 'higher order' pedagogies. ...
This paper reports on the findings of a Tasmanian study for the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). The study, Repertoires for Diversity, soon to be published by DEST through the Literacy and Numeracy Clearinghouse, was funded through the Australian Government's Effective Teaching and Learning Practices for Students with Learning Difficulties Initiative. Its purpose was to provide specific support to increase teachers' capacity to enhance the literacy and numeracy development of students with learning difficulties in the early and middle years of schooling. The Tasmanian study was designed to explore connections between school and teacher practices used in inclusive primary grade classes and schools' levels of 'value-adding', determined from national benchmark testing. The results showed that value-adding schools used a range of policies, programs and school-wide processes and professional learning to support literacy and numeracy pedagogies. The study acknowledged the multiple challenges facing teachers who are attempting to balance continuous improvement of students' literacy and numeracy learning with that of increasing social and educational diversity of inclusive school communities.
... The studies published in the period 2004-2007 have again been mostly undertaken with teachers as their participants with many exploring the relationship between beliefs and practice. Two Australian writers, who have regularly addressed this area both on their own, and in conjunction with others, are Anderson (2005) and Beswick (2005a, 2005b). Anderson (2005) (often with White & Sullivan, 2004) reported on her work with primary school teachers in New South Wales where she explored the relationship between the teachers' problem solving teaching approaches and their beliefs about the role of problem solving in mathematics. ...
... A particular feature of Anderson, Sullivan and White's report was the authors' attention to theorising, setting this report apart from many other, often largely descriptive, reports on teachers' beliefs. Beswick is another author who has reported extensively and for an extended period of time on beliefs (Beswick, 2005aBeswick, , 2005bBeswick, , 2007 Beswick, Watson, & Brown, 2006), focussing primarily on secondary teachers. Amongst other findings, she identified nine beliefs held by secondary teachers about the nature of mathematics, mathematics learning and the role of the teacher. ...
This is the third chapter on affective issues to appear in MERGA reviews of research in mathematics education and as such reflects the ongoing importance of affective issues to the mathematics education research community. The first two chapters (Grootenboer, Lomas, & Ingram, 2008; Schuck & Grootenboer, 2004) noted a continuing move away from studies on attitudes to projects on beliefs and the consideration of a broader range of affective aspects. In the current review period, 2008-2011, there is a lessening focus on beliefs, a growing focus on identity, and an even spread of studies on other affective aspects.
... Conduct changes the environment conditions and, vice versa, gets formed itself under certain conditions of environment (Bandura, 1989). The correlation of teachers' beliefs, preferences, and practice is not directly proportional (Liljedahl, 2009), but, as revealed by Beswick (Beswick, 2005), beliefs and practice develop together and affect one another, as they are dialectically interrelated. ...
The outcomes of the research on teachers’ beliefs and their relatedness to their work routine are often contradictory, hard to systematize and predict. This may be evidence that research on teachers’ beliefs need a change in research paradigm: it should regard various approaches, in other words, research should be carried out in the Holistic paradigm framework. As a field inquiry concerned with the holistic exploration of phenomena and events, systems theory pertains to both epistemological and ontological situations. The present article suggests to emphasize in inquiries on mathematics teachers’ beliefs the bond of teachers’ beliefs with their practice and analyze the system of mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practice (SMTBP) from the position of Complex Adaptive System (CAS). The aim of the article is to show that the basic features of CAS are present in SMTBP as well and that there exist some features of CAS that have not been sufficiently regarded in previous research on teachers’ beliefs but that could be used to characterize the change of teachers’ beliefs and the processes of practical implementation of teachers’ beliefs in their work. The article is focused on the external factors that may affect these processes, and the principle of Bronfenbrenner ecological system theory has been used for systematizing them. Application of CAS Theory for the studies of SMTBP will provide a unified approach to interpreting the outcomes concerning teachers’ beliefs that, in turn, will make it possible to account for a large number of revelations that were impossible to account for within the framework of non-holistic paradigms.
... Belief statement 3 is a pre-requisite for the creation of a constructivist classroom environment according to Pirie and Kieren (1992), and in the absence of the belief expressed in statement 4 one can only wonder what purpose teachers would see their work having. Nevertheless, there is evidence that teachers do hold differing beliefs about the capacities of various groups of students to learn mathematics (Beswick, 2002Beswick, , 2004Beswick, , 2005b Schoen et al. 2003). A corollary of belief statement 4 that ascribes significant responsibility for students' learning to the teacher is that failure for students to progress must be interpreted as failure on the part of the teacher. ...
This paper reports the findings of a study that sought to identify particular centrally held beliefs of secondary mathematics
teachers that underpinned the establishment of classroom environments that were consistent with the principles of constructivism.
The nine crucial beliefs identified were held by one or other of two teachers and emerged from teacher and student surveys,
interviews with the teachers and classroom observations. As is the case with all beliefs, these beliefs were contextually
bound but since the contexts in which they applied were broader than particular classrooms it is argued that they may be generalisable
to other contexts and even predictive of teachers likely to create similar classroom environments.
... A combined effort of lecturers in mathematics and foundation subjects might be beneficial for designing such activities. This level of teacher education will provide a basis for the integration of the concepts across KLAs, which is a key requirement for teaching numeracy (Beswick, 2005). The understanding of the theoretical principles of scaffolding will allow pre-service teachers to anchor their repertoire of scaffolding techniques provided by recent research. ...
Scaffolding has become increasingly popular as it provides teachers with an appealing alternative to traditional classroom techniques of teaching. Recent research identified a number of different ways that scaffolding can be used in the classroom to improve students' numeracy levels in primary schools. However, despite the importance of scaffolding, pre-service teachers experience difficulties in understanding the complex techniques of scaffolding and often fail to make connections between theoretical explanations and their practical use. This paper examines current perceptions of scaffolding by a cohort of pre-service teachers, both in its conceptual framework and its practical implications to teaching in the classroom, and to teaching numeracy in particular. The results indicated that the participants appreciated the importance of scaffolding as an alternative to the traditional forms of educational instruction. However, they continue to demonstrate a limited appreciation of the more complex and theoretical aspects of scaffolding.
... Teacher beliefs about mathematics, mathematics learning and mathematics teaching play a critical role in determining how teachers help their students develop their mathematics (Pajares, 1992;Schuck & Grootenboer, 2004). A number of researchers have linked the success, or lack of success, of reform movements in mathematics to the efforts to adequately address teacher beliefs (Battista, 1994;Beswick, 2005;Stipek & Byler, 1997). ...
This paper reports on the espoused views of a group of primary teachers as they discuss issues related to the teaching of school mathematics to Australian Aboriginal students. They believe that their teaching is significantly affected by trying to program and cater for the wide range of abilities, the amount of mathematics content to be covered and the lack of teaching time. They report a lack of teacher education preparation for teaching mathematics across ability groups and the difficulty of inventing appropriate teaching strategies to meet the learning needs of Aboriginal children. Australian Aboriginal people continue to be the poorest, most incarcerated, most unemployed and least educated people in Australia (Kemp, 2001). Aboriginal students continue to achieve lower educational levels than those of other Australian students (NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc./NSW Department of Education and Training, 2004). Over the last 20 years, "there has been little improvement in the educational outcomes for Aboriginal students" (Cavanagh, 2005, p. 285). In NSW primary schools, Aboriginal students meet the mathematics derived from the state syllabus (Board of Studies, NSW, 2002) with the assistance of their teachers. Most of these teachers in NSW are non-Aboriginal. While this is not, of itself, a cause for concern, there is the potential for cultural conflicts in terms of the understandings and views of the Aboriginal students (and their families) and those of the teachers (Howard, 2001; Matthews, Howard, & Perry, 2003). The view that mathematics and mathematics learning is context and value-free in its nature, content and practice has been long challenged (Barton, 1992; Bishop, 1994) with the acknowledgment that the continuing evolution of mathematics takes place in socially and culturally laden contexts (Zevenbergen, 2003). Sfard and Prusak (2005) suggest that learning is a process of sociocultural interaction. School mathematics is constructed in a social context governed by rules. These rules reflect the social and cultural rules of the wider society as interpreted by the individual classroom teacher. School mathematics, though taught within social and cultural practices, may not acknowledge the mathematics of the student's cultural origins. "The 'one mathematics' curricula common in our schools must be seriously questioned because it limits the possibility of mathematics" (Barton, 1992, p. 9). Teachers need to acknowledge the social and cultural contexts in which learning takes place. They have to appreciate the learning environment through the eyes of the learner and thus begin to develop a curriculum that results from negotiation between students, teachers and community. This is particularly so for Aboriginal students placed in classrooms with non-Aboriginal students (Howard, Perry, Lowe, Ziems, & McKnight, 2003; NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc./NSW Department of Education and Training, 2004). Teacher beliefs about mathematics, mathematics learning and mathematics teaching play a critical role in determining how teachers help their students develop their mathematics (Pajares, 1992; Schuck & Grootenboer, 2004). A number of researchers have linked the success, or lack of success, of reform movements in mathematics to the efforts to adequately address teacher beliefs (Battista, 1994; Beswick, 2005; Stipek & Byler, 1997).
In this article, we present findings that examined special education teachers’ perception of students’ with disabilities ability, instructional needs, and difficulties for using visual representations (VRs) as a strategy to solve mathematics problems. In addition, whether these perceptions differed by instructional grade or setting currently teaching was examined. Survey data from 97 in-service teachers revealed, regardless of instructional setting or grade level taught, that they believe students with disabilities have the ability to learn about and use VRs and need to be taught to use VRs. Furthermore, the special education teachers perceived students with disabilities to have difficulty with all aspects related to using VRs in mathematical problem-solving. Implications for teacher training and development are provided.
