News & Views item - June 2011

 

What Price the Production of Teachers of Mathematics? (June 13, 2011)

An article in the June 10, 2011 issue of Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1193855), "Preparing Future Math Teachers", asks "Who is best prepared to teach middle school [ages 11 to 13] mathematics?

 

The authors, William H. Schmidt, Richard Houang and Leland S. Cogan, all from Michigan State University, note that PCAST, the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has recommended that within the decade 100,000  middle school STEM teachers need to be recruited and trained with "deep content knowledge in STEM subjects and mastery of the pedagogical skills required to teach these subjects well". On a population basis that would be the equivalent of ~6,700 for Australia.

 

So what makes a well-qualified middle school mathematics teacher?

 

The paper's authors took up the challenge "by re-examining data from the 2010 Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), a 16-country survey of math teachers-in-training near the end of their final semester. TEDS was conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) with an eye to developing international benchmarks for teacher preparation. This is similar to what was done for K–12 (primary and secondary) curricula via the IEA Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)". In regard to the quality of US K-12 graduates entering teaching compared to their "international peers" the paper concludes: "On average, U.S. future teachers as they enter teacher preparation programs have been exposed to a less-demanding K–12 curriculum and have lower levels of mathematics knowledge than those in other countries... If Taiwan and Singapore were to select their average eighth graders (as represented by median performance on each country's distribution for the 2003 TIMSS) to become future middle school mathematics teachers, the United States would have to draw its future teachers from above their 75th percentile to be comparable to those from Taiwan and Singapore in their knowledge of mathematics."

 

Comparing the knowledge of potential future middle school teachers of mathematics, as reflected by TEDS, with the average eighth-grade mathematics achievement, as determined in TIMSS the authors found a "strong relation between TEDS and TIMSS [the square of the correlation coefficient (R2) = 0.70, P < 0.0004]  [which] reflects how selection and/or recruitment based on knowledge before entry into teacher training relates to future teachers' knowledge when exiting from training". This is demonstrated in the chart.

 

The paper also reports on some 80 US colleges/universities average TEDS scores as plotted against the "average SAT (a standardized college admissions achievement test) mathematics score for the institution's TEDS-participating students". Referring to the chart above: "Future teachers in U.S. institutions above the line allocated, on average, about 40% to mathematics and 28% to general pedagogy. Below the line, the averages were about 30% for mathematics and 34% for general pedagogy. The 9% difference for mathematics courses was statistically significant (P < 0.0001)."

 

And the authors' conclusion which may well be pertinent to the situation in Australia: "The implication given the relatively weak U.S. K–12 mathematics curriculum is that recruitment of future teachers must come from the upper end of the U.S. distribution of mathematics performance in order to be somewhat competitive with high-achieving countries. However, this may not be feasible if current efforts to raise salaries for such individuals are not realized. In addition, the data summarized above also highlight the importance of emphasizing courses in mathematics in the preparation of such teachers."