Michael Cavanagh

• Macquarie University

This paper reports an investigation into what 13 pre-service teachers (PTs) enrolled in a secondary mathematics methods unit in one university noticed when providing written feedback on peers’ lesson plans. Drawing on the first two elements of the curricular noticing framework (Dietiker et al., 2018), we identify aspects of the lesson plans the PTs...

Challenges exist in the validating procedure and comprehensiveness of the existing TSE measurements, though advancements have been achieved. Also, less consistencies have been received regarding teacher self-efficacy measurement in Chinese context so that the study developed and validated a new comprehensive scale for this construct. A total of 854...

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) is among the most-studied constructs in teacher education and resists change after the early stages of devel�opment, particularly during professional experience. This study inves�tigates the sources of early-career TSE longitudinally, which few previous studies have done. Two phases of one-on-one interviews were compl...

This article aims to contribute new, longitudinal evidence on teacher self-efficacy (TSE) by investigating changes in TSE over the last 2 years of an Australian initial teacher education program. Two hundred and one pre-service teachers were surveyed at three timepoints: (1) after the first professional experience placement, (2) before and (3) afte...

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) is one important construct in teacher education research and malleable at early career stages before becoming resistant to change once established. Longitudinal research plays an essential role in capturing TSE changes and although it has been claimed to be lacking, no systematic methodological review of these studies ha...

This study investigates the lived experiences of three casual relief teachers (CRTs) and their work within Australian primary schools for a period of one school year. Practice architecture theory was used as a theoretical framework to examine whether participants saw any advantages to working on a casual basis, how they think casual teaching could...

Professional experience plays a vital role in the formation of teaching self-efficacy (TSE), a construct which has attracted much attention from teacher education researchers. This study investigates how 18 preservice teachers (PTs) reported changes in their TSE for their first professional placement. Data were collected via face-to-face interviews...

Secondary mathematics teachers working in the Australian education sector are required to plan lessons that engage with students of different genders, cultures and levels of literacy and numeracy. Teaching Secondary Mathematics engages directly with the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers to hel...

Casual relief teachers (CRTs) are a significant part of the Australian education system. This paper reports how executive staff, such as principals, deputy principals, and head teachers, support CRTs, and the perceptions that executive staff have about CRTs who work at their schools. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with a sel...

This paper presents the results of a pilot study in which 11 triads comprising a pre-service teacher, a supervising teacher and a university supervisor used a video platform for pre-service teacher self-reflection and for the provision of feedback. Pre-service teachers made video recordings of one lesson each week during a four-week professional ex...

Mathematical structure is central to the interconnectedness of numerical, spatial or logical relationships, but it is not known how well teachers understand this concept or implement it in pedagogical practice. In this paper, we examine three junior secondary mathematics teachers’ understanding of mathematical structure and observe whether they app...

This study examines the professional experiences of casual relief teachers (CRTs) and some of the challenges they face through the lens of practice architecture theory. Practice architecture theory considers human activity through the multi‐layered lens of sayings, doings and relatings. A survey was used to collect responses from 104 CRTs who are t...

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the influences on, and tensions within, initial teacher education in mathematics, and to identify the research outcomes that might advance our understanding of learning and practices in this context. We have used a socio-spatial approach to organise our review into the three ‘spaces’ of policy, teacher educ...

While previous studies have highlighted the significance of metaphors in studying teacher identities and values, little is known about metaphorical representation of teaching as given by casual relief teachers (CRTs). This study examines metaphors from participants who teach or have taught on a casual basis in Australian primary schools. Responses...

The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of primary pre-service teachers engaged in a peer-group mentoring program during a professional experience placement. Pre-service teachers completed weekly questionnaires and an interview about their experiences. Questionnaire and interview responses were coded and analysed according to three...

Formative assessment has been defined as any interaction that generates data on student learning and is used by teachers and students to inform teaching and learning, to address specific student learning difficulties and support learning growth over time. A wide variety of assessment strategies, tools and resources currently exist to support and...

This paper reports a pilot study to investigate four preservice teachers' reports of their impact on student learning while they completed a four-week professional experience block. We used Hiebert, Morris, Berk, and Jansen's (2007) framework for teacher preparation to analyse the how the participants planned, assessed and reflected on a lesson seq...

This study investigates the level of teacher self-efficacy (TSE) among 90 secondary preservice teachers (PSTs) before their first teaching practice and the factors which influenced their ratings. The Scale for Teacher Self-Efficacy (STSE) (Pfitzner-Eden, Thiel, & Horsley, 2014) was adapted by adding some open-ended questions. Data were analysed via...

As part of the Opening Real Science: Authentic Mathematics and Science Education for Australia project, an online mathematics learning module embedding conceptual thinking about infinity in science-based contexts, was designed and trialled with a cohort of 22 pre-service teachers during 1 week of intensive study. This research addressed the questio...

This paper explores one implementation of an extended, structured, collaborative professional experience program. Its context is a new partnership between a university and a professional experience school. The program draws on elements of Instructional Rounds and Lesson Study, framed around a learning community model of professional experience for...

Opening Real Science (ORS) is a three-year government initiative developed as part of the Mathematics and Science Teachers program. It is a collaboration across universities involving teacher educators, scientists, mathematicians, statisticians and educational designers aimed at improving primary and secondary pre-service teachers' competence and c...

Problem solving has been identified as an important approach to learning and teaching mathematics, yet many primary pre-service teachers (PSTs) struggle to implement it during their professional experience. In this paper, we report the experiences of a group of four primary PSTs who, in an additional professional experience placement, formed a lear...

In this paper, we report on a group of four primary teacher education students who had achieved very good results in secondary school mathematics and a merit grade in an introductory numeracy unit which they had completed as part of their teacher education studies. The participants attended a local primary school each fortnight over a school term t...

Many primary pre-service teachers (PSTs) who are enthused by tertiary courses that espouse and model a socio-constructivist approach to teaching mathematics, revert to a traditional approach when they encounter mathematics teaching during professional experience. An intervention was designed to translate the initial pedagogical intent of four mathe...

This study validated the semantic items of three related scales aimed at characterising the perceived worth of mathematics-education-related mobile applications (apps). The technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model was used as the conceptual framework for the analysis. Three hundred and seventy-three preservice students studying pri...

Curriculum design in higher education environments, namely the consideration of aims, learning outcomes, syllabus, pedagogy and assessment, can often be ad hoc and driven by informal cultural habits. Academics with disciplinary expertise may be resistant to (or ignorant of) pedagogical approaches beyond existing practice. In an environment where th...

Opening Real Science (ORS) is an Australian Government funded project in which leading teacher educators, scientists, mathematicians, statisticians and ICT designers are collaborating to develop online modules for implementation in teacher education programs, aimed at building the competence and confidence teachers need to inspire their students. T...

This paper reports on the reflective practice of a group of nine secondary mathematics pre-service teachers. The pre-service teachers participated in a year-long, school-based professional experience program which focussed on observing, co-teaching and reflecting on a series of problem-solving lessons in two junior secondary school mathematics clas...

We report the development of preservice teachers' oral presentation performance based on a technology-mediated video reflection system. Participants video-recorded oral presentations and uploaded them to an online blog to view and reflect on their performance and that of their peers. Four presentations by forty-one participants were analysed using...

This paper describes the process followed by a group of four primary and secondary teacher educators at a university in Sydney, Australia, to develop a collective understanding of the nature and value of reflective practice. The project developed a framework and set of indicators to assess the quality of pre-service teachers’ reflective writing and...

Abstract The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument for appraising educational apps in mathematics education. The instrument allows mathematics related apps to be analysed based on the three aspects of the TPACK (technological pedagogical content knowledge) model, namely, content, technology and pedagogy. Four sub-scales were create...

A research-based understanding of how to develop and assess classroom presentation skills is vital for the effective development of preservice teacher communication capabilities. This paper identifies and compares two different models of assessing pre-service teachers' presentation performance - one based on the Modes of Communication (voice, body...

New learning technologies have brought fresh challenges to teachers in selecting appropriate educational resources, particularly in regards to mobile devices. There are an impressive number of educational mobile learning applications, more commonly known as apps, that teachers need to understand before integrating them into the classroom. To make t...

http://www.citejournal.org/vol13/iss1/mathematics/article1.cfm

This paper reports the development and implementation of a collaborative professional experience learning community for a group of nine pre-service secondary mathematics teachers. The pre-service teachers and their methods lecturer made 12 school visits over one academic year to a local secondary school. The pre-service teachers observed and co-tau...

We investigated how students interpret linear and quadratic graphs on a graphics calculator screen. Clinical interviews were conducted with 25 Grade 10–11 students as they used graphics calculators to study graphs of straight lines and parabolas. Student errors were attributable to four main causes: a tendency to accept the graphic image uncritical...

The need for appraising the effective integration of technologies into teaching and learning within a disciplinary context is crucial for upholding quality teaching standards in schools and formulating professional development programs. This paper describes the development and validation of an instrument aimed at characterising the integration of t...

The knowledge of mathematics teachers has become a central focus of educational researchers and policy makers with conceptions of teacher knowledge continuously being transformed. Intuitively, we have known for some time what research now provides an evidence-base for – that “teacher knowledge matters” (Sullivan, 2008a, p. 2). But exactly what know...

We report the results of an observational study of three secondary mathematics teachers who had no prior experience teaching with technology as they began to use an interactive online mathematics learning and teaching resource called HOTmaths in their lessons. We gave the teachers only basic instruction on how to operate the program and then observ...

This paper reports on how the cognitive, behavioural and affective communication competencies of undergraduate students were developed using an online Video Reflection system. Pre-service teachers were provided with communication scenarios and asked to record short videos of one another making presentations. Students then uploaded their videos to a...

This paper reports on a case study which examined factors leading to the adoption of graphics calculators (GCs) by secondary mathematics teachers in the state of New South Wales, Australia. In total, 587 teachers of the General Mathematics Course (Years 11 and 12) participated in the study. The median teachers' stage of adoption of GCs was found to...

This article reports on students’ experiences of lectures which included many opportunities for active engagement through cooperative learning activities. At the end of a 13-week semester-long unit, 113 students completed a questionnaire which contained five open-ended questions focusing on the extent to which the students thought that the lecture...

This paper reports a study of three beginning secondary mathematics teachers and how their reflective practice developed during a one-year university teacher education program and concurrent professional fieldwork experience or practicum. The participants were interviewed three times during the practicum and once more in their first year of teachin...

This paper reports part of a larger study and examines one teacher's use of problem-solving teaching approaches in Years 7 and 9. Thirteen problem-solving lessons were observed over an 18 month period during which the teacher devised and used 7 different problem-solving tasks. Three tasks are described in detail and analysed in terms of task struct...

This paper applies a situated perspective on learning to investigate the process of becoming a secondary mathematics teacher. We followed a group of beginning teachers into their early teaching careers. Each participant was interviewed on three separate occasions during their university studies in order to examine how they interpreted their practic...

How teachers respond to a new syllabus, what they say and do within the challenging landscape of educational reform and curriculum implementation in the contemporary postmodern world attracts considerable research interest from scholars. The analysis of teachers' perceptions and actions presented here is set within the context of significant change...

This paper reports on a study of Year 7 students' understanding of area measurentent. 43 students completed a written test just before and immediately afrer study'ing areas oJ rectangles and triangles. Twelve of these students, representing the range of ability in the sample, were interviewed as they solved three erea tasks. Results indicate that m...

Research suggests that pre-service teachers' beliefs about mathematics and mathematics teaching are a strong indicator of their future teaching practice. In this interview study, 16 pre-service secondary teachers were asked to reflect on their own school experiences and discuss their beliefs about what constitutes a good teacher and good teaching....

This paper presents part of an on-going study into how secondary teachers in New South Wales are implementing a reform-oriented syllabus. A self-report survey was used in a preliminary investigation to identify how teachers interpreted the aims of the syllabus and the impact it had on their classroom practice. Teachers appeared to understand the re...

Wenger 11998) and Lave and Wenger 1199 l) developed a social theory of cognition in which learning takes place as a result of one's legitinate periplteral participcttion in a cotrttnuttin' oJ practice.In this paper, we apply Lave and Wenger's theory in learning to teach secondary mathematics. We report on clinical interview data concerning the prac...

As part of the moves to reform mathematics teaching in New South Wales, the Years 7-10 Mathematics Syllabus emphasises working mathematically. This paper presents the results of interviews conducted with 39 teachers to examine how they interpret the aims of working mathematically and the extent to which they are implementing working mathematically...

We studied how three secondary mathematics teachers who had no prior experience teaching with technology used an online mathematics learning system. The teachers received minimal instruction on how to use the system before we observed them over four school terms as they taught with it. We used the Pedagogical Technology Knowledge framework (Thomas...