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Eric.ed.gov – Causes Underlying Pre-Service Teachers’ Negative Beliefs and Anxieties about Mathematics

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This article reports on a study that investigated the causes underlying a sample of eighteen third-year Australian pre-service primary teachers’ negative beliefs and anxiety about mathematics. It was found that most of the participants’ maths-anxiety could be attributed to their primary school experiences in learning mathematics. Situations such as teaching mathematics or being evaluated in mathematics were noted as particularly stressful and mathematical topics such as algebra, space and number sense were specifically identified to cause maths- anxiety. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about the implications of these findings for an ensuing program whose purpose is to help these pre-service teachers address their negative beliefs and anxieties about mathematics. [For complete proceedings, see ED489597.] Link til kilde

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Eric.ed.gov – Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers: A Review of the Value-Added Analysis Underlying the Effectiveness Rankings of Los Angeles Unified School District Teachers by the “Los Angeles Times”

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: On August 14, 2010, the “Los Angeles Times” published the results of a statistical analysis of student test data to provide information about elementary schools and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The analysis, covering the period from 2003 to 2009, was put forward as an evaluation of the effects of schools and their teachers on the performance of students taking the reading and math portions of the California Standardized Test. In Los Angeles, teachers were classified into one of five levels of “effectiveness” for their teaching in reading, math and a composite of the two. The decision by the “L.A. Times” to make these results publicly available at a dedicated web site, and to publish an extensive front page story that contrasted–by name–teachers… Continue Reading

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tandfonline.com – Using students’ selection of significant events in mathematics lessons to deduce their underlying predispositions

tandfonline.com har udgivet en rapport under søgningen “Teacher Education Mathematics”: Abstract Learners’ perspectives on classroom teaching have been explored in various ways. Within the context of past research, the student voice approach has shown the potential of making teaching and learning more effective. This article reports on students’ perceptions with the aim of revealing their predispositions in the sense of Bruner’s perceptual set theory concerning mathematics lessons. By asking students about significant events in specific mathematics lessons they attended and their associated justifications, insights into students’ predispositions (beliefs) about teaching and learning mathematics are gained. We were able to reconstruct a wide range of predispositions, which indicate both a view on mathematics education that is quite positive and as well a willingness to learn comprehensively. As a further result, we… Continue Reading