Page 181 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews
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and not for mathematical problem-solving at any point. Neither math self-efficacy nor math anxiety were found to be predictive.
Teacher predictors of mathematical development
In Chapter 2, the roles of various teacher factors in children’s mathematical development were also considered: mathematics teaching behavior, mathematical knowledge for teaching knowledge, and mathematics teaching self-efficacy. In Chapter 4, the contributions of participation in a professional development intervention and practice period with the conduct of dynamic math interviews for the identification of children’s math learning needs were examined.
Mathematics teaching behavior was found to be a negative predictor for the development of both children’s arithmetic fluency and mathematical problem-solving ability (Chapter 2). This finding was quite unexpected and in contrast to the findings of studies showing positive effects of teaching behavior (e.g., classroom management, interactive mathematics lessons) on children’s mathematics achievement (Muijs & Reynolds, 2002; Stronge et al., 2011). A possible explanation for the contradictory role found for mathematics teaching behavior in the present research may lie in the complexity of teaching mathematics (Ball et al., 2008). The teaching of mathematics requires a wide variety of skills: attunement of teaching behavior to math learning goals, adapting teaching behavior towards flexible use of textbook content, drawing of connections between underlying concepts and procedures, and selection of suitable representations for problems and domains (Ball et al., 2008; Hiebert & Grouws, 2007). On the basis of a meta-analysis conducted by Kyriakides et al. (2013), it has been recommended that choices that teachers make during their math teaching should always be well-considered and adopted from effective mathematics teaching approaches to obtain the best teaching results. Another possible explanation for the contradictory role observed for mathematics teaching behavior in the present research may be that the mathematical education standards in the Netherlands are quite high (Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2021; Mullis, 2020).
In previous research, the specific aspects of mathematics teaching behavior responsible for the prediction of children’s math success were
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Summary and general discussion
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