Page 65 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews

Impact of child and teacher factors on mathematical development
learning, diverse thinking processes and mathematical understanding of children, which requires adaptive teacher competencies.
The teaching of mathematics is known to be complicated, involve longer-term learning processes, and indeed call for teachers to adapt their teaching to the different needs of the children in their classrooms (Ball et al., 2008; Corno, 2008). Muijs and Reynolds (2002) found that teachers perceive themselves to have more content knowledge and skills for teaching in the early mathematics domains compared to later domains of the mathematical curriculum (e.g., fractions and proportions). This suggests that teachers are aware of the importance of having sufficient mathematical knowledge for teaching. With regard to the influence of the teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, this was indeed found to be the case: it significantly predicted the development of the children’s mathematical problem- solving in the present study. This finding is in line with the assumption that specific mathematics competencies are required of teachers to teach and stimulate mathematical problem-solving (Kolovou, 2011; Walshaw & Anthony, 2008). Although mathematics teaching behavior that facilitates arithmetic fluency or mathematical problem-solving overlaps, specific accents are required. The development of arithmetic fluency requires teaching behavior that is aimed at the selection of appropriate problem-solving strategies in mathematics and practice with these strategies. This can generally be achieved using active, whole-class teaching (Kling & Bay-Williams, 2014; Muijs & Reynolds, 2000). In contrast, the development of mathematical problem-solving requires that the teacher pose think-activating questions, clearly verify solutions for children, be sensitive to the math learning needs of the children, flexible enough to meet the individual math learning needs of children, and capable of checking that math learning goals have been achieved (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007; Van der Lans et al., 2015, 2018; Verschaffel et al., 1999).
Finally and again contrary to what was expected on the basis of several previous studies (Ashton & Webb, 1986; Joët et al., 2011; Pietsch et al., 2003; Tella, 2008), the mathematics teaching self-efficacy of the teachers negatively related to the development of the children’s mathematical problem-solving and showed no significant associations
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