Exploring the Mathematical Education of Teachers Using Teds-m Data

This book uses the publicly available TEDS-M data to answer such questions as: How does teacher education contribute to the learning outcomes of future teachers? Are there programs that are more successful than others in helping teachers learn to teach mathematics? How does the local and national policy environment contribute to teacher education outcomes? It invites readers to explore these questions across a large number of international settings.

The importance of preparing future mathematics teachers has become a priority across many nations. Across the globe nations have allocated resources and expertise to this endeavour. Yet in spite of the importance accorded to teacher education not much is known about different approaches to preparing knowledgeable teachers and whether these approaches do in fact achieve their purpose. The Mathematics Teacher Education and Development Study (TEDS-M) is the first, and to date the only, cross-national study using scientific and representative samples to provide empirical data on the knowledge that future mathematics teachers of primary and secondary school acquire in their teacher education programs.  The study addresses the central importance of teacher knowledge in learning to teach mathematics by examining variation in the nature and influence of teacher education programs within and across countries.

The study collected data on teacher education programs structure, curriculum and opportunities to learn, on teacher educators’ characteristics and beliefs, and on future mathematics teachers’ individual characteristics, beliefs, and mathematics and pedagogical knowledge across 17 countries providing a unique opportunity to explore enduring questions in the field.

Maria Teresa Tatto is the Southwest borderlands professor of comparative education at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and professor in the division of educational leadership and innovation at ASU. She received her doctoral degree in policy analysis and evaluation research in education from Harvard University. Her scholarship is characterized by its use of international comparative frameworks to study education policy and its impact on education systems. She has published extensively on areas such as the structure and impact of different approaches to educating teachers, the relationships between teaching and learning, the influence of early childhood education on improved knowledge levels for the rural poor and children of underserved populations, the role of values education on citizenship formation, and the development of effective policies to support the education of children of migrant workers in the U.S. among others.

Professor Tatto is the principal investigator forthe Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDSM), and for the First Five Years of Mathematics Teaching Study (FIRSTMATH), both NSF-funded and designed to explore the connections between mathematics pre-service preparation and what is learned on-the-job during the first years of teaching. She has done research in collaboration with scholars in several countries including Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and Latin America. Her work combines the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches and methods in the social sciences. Professor Tatto is studying the characteristics and outcomes of teacher preparation across different national contexts, and the types of evidence that are used at the macro (system) and micro (institutions) levels to make decisions that shape the initial preparation and continued development of teachers. The latter study is sponsored by the World Education Research Association and is a collaboration of colleagues across 12 countries. She is additionally studying the policy and practice dynamic on teacher learning in England and in the U.S. using a sociocultural framework. She has served as a consultant to donor organizations and governments. She is a former president of the Comparative and International Education Society.