Literary

 Review   1  

 
Literature  Review  
 
 
 
Improving  the  Quality  of  Elementary  Mathematics  Student  Teaching:  
Using  Field  Support  Materials  to  Develop  Reflective  Practice  in  Student  Teachers  
By  Amy  Roth  Mcduffie  
 
 

This article talks about a program to strengthen subject-specific pedagogy skills

for student teachers. Perfect for me! It talks specifically about teaching mathematics in a

K-8 setting. The basis is to prepare elementary school teachers to be reflective about

mathematics and to plan and prepare them to be reflective.

It also talks about how to be effective in implementing subject-specific pedagogy

and more importantly how to measure if you are being effective. It talks about a study

done on how mentoring strategies and materials designed to engage students during

lesson planning, and teaching. To improve classroom practices and methods, the classes

for pre- service teachers focused not just on teaching general methods but they focused

on:

There are four common themes in these works: (1) Problem Solving—being able to pose

good mathematical questions and problems that are productive for students’ learning; (2)

Explanations—communicating mathematical ideas, justifying reasoning, interpreting

strategies of others, and responding productively to questions; (3) Representations—

carefully choosing the best diagrams, examples, symbols, for maximum understanding;

and (4) Mathematical Connections—making explicit how mathematical ideas are related

to each other and applied to the real world (Ball, Hill, & Bass, 2005; Hill, Rowan, & Ball,
Literary  Review   2  

2005; NCTM, 2000; NRC, 2001). Our elementary teacher preparation program chose to

emphasize problem solving, explanations, representations, and mathematical connections

as four important subject-specific strategies that student teachers need to be able to

implement to effectively teach mathematics.

Another important aspect is reflection. In the final phase of the study, all 102

student teachers in both experimental and control groups were asked to reflect upon each

mathematics lesson they taught during the first semester of student teaching by

completing the “Reflection” section of the lesson plan format which directed their

reflection into the four categories of mathematics subject specific pedagogy (problem

solving, explanations, representations, connections). This was especially interesting

because I had been trying to implement this and was not sure how. It is so important to

reflect on my own work and analyze what worked and what did not.
Literary  Review   3  

Reference

Mcduffie, A. R. (2004). Mathematics Teaching as a Deliberate Practice: An Investigation of Elementary

Pre-service Teachers Reflective Thinking During Student Teaching. Journal of Mathematics Teacher

Education, 7(1), 33-61. doi:10.1023/b:jmte.0000009970.12529.f4