Page 184 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews

182
Chapter 6
mathematics achievement with teacher self-efficacy improved by participation in a professional development program with a focus teaching through mathematical problem-solving. It is thus promising that the present intervention for the training of dynamic math interviewing promoted teachers’ self-efficacy for the teaching of mathematics (Chapter 4). It could be the case that the intervention as described in Chapter 4 contributed to teachers’ beliefs in their competences to the teaching of mathematics.
To summarize, for the predictive role of teacher factors in children’s mathematical development, the results reported in Chapter 2 show mathematics teaching behavior to be an unexpectedly negative predictor for the development of both arithmetic fluency and mathematical problem-solving. The results reported in Chapter 4 show mathematics teaching behavior to improve following participation in the professional development program. Neither mathematical knowledge nor mathematics teaching self-efficacy predicted the development of the children’s arithmetic fluency. For the development of the children’s mathematical problem-solving over the course of grade 4, mathematical knowledge for teaching was found to be a positive predictor and mathematics teaching self- efficacy a negative predictor. The findings of negative associations for children’s mathematical problem-solving with the mathematics teaching behavior and mathematics self-efficacy of teachers were unexpected and difficult but not impossible to explain. As reported in Chapter 4, all of the teacher factors increased following participation in the professional development program with a focus on dynamic math interviewing. Given that teachers who show high mathematics teaching self-efficacy and high mathematical knowledge for teaching are known to better prepare and adapt their mathematics instruction than teachers showing lower levels of self-efficacy and knowledge (Chang, 2015; Hill et al., 2008; Nurlu, 2015), these intervention results are valuable.