A Study On The Specialized Content Knowledge(SCK) And Teacher Efficacy Of Math Students In Normal University

The quality of teachers is increasingly concerned by governments and educational circles all over the world.What particularly concern is that mathematics teachers do not have sufficient teaching preparation for mathematics.This research confirms an important proportion of pre-service mathematics teachers' understanding of mathematics teaching that their perception is still inadequate.The mathematics knowledge for teaching(MKT)(Thames,Sleep,Bass,&Ball,2008)is considered to consist of two dimensions,each of which has several elements.The first dimension is content knowledge(CK)which represents the mathematics knowledge required by teachers.It includes three elements that are common content knowledge(CCK),specialized content knowledge(SCK)and knowledge at mathematical horizon(KMH).The second dimension of MKT is pedagogical content knowledge(PCK),which is composed of knowledge of content and students(KCS),knowledge of content and teaching(KCT)and knowledge of curriculum(KC).The research shows that the mathematics teacher efficacy(MTE)is composed of two dimensions.The first dimension is the personal mathematics teaching efficacy(PMTE),which represents the belief in the effective teaching of mathematics.The mathematics teaching outcome expectancy(MTOE)is the second dimension of teacher efficacy,which represents the belief that individual effective teaching can bring change to students' mathematics learning.The mathematics knowledge for teaching and teacher efficacy respectively belong to two areas of teaching knowledge and teacher's belief,which play an important role in teachers' professional development.Foreign scholars have been the first to study the relationship between teaching knowledge and teaching belief.The main subjects of this study are math students in normal university and the normal students of elementary education department(science direction).This paper aims to explore the relationship between math students' SCK and teacher efficacy in normal university.This study mainly applies questionnaire and interview.The researchers designed four sets of parallel questionnaires and tested the effectiveness of the questionnaires.The data were collected by questionnaire survey and processed by SPSS20.0 for conducting multiple regression analysis.The following conclusions were summarized according to data analysis and tracking the interview:(1)Math students' CCK and SCK was growing steadily at normal university in the process of learning of mathematics curriculum teaching theory and education practice,and learning mathematics curriculum teaching theory and education practice can effectively promote their CCK and SCK growth.(2)Math students' teacher efficacy at normal university is basically stable in the process of learning of mathematics curriculum teaching theory,while in the education internship,their teacher efficacy has decreased obviously.(3)Math students' teacher efficacy at normal university should not effectively predict the growth of their SCK.But from a single dimension,the PMTE of math students in normal university can effectively predict their SCK growth,and their MTOE cannot effectively predict their SCK growth.(4)Math students' CCK interacting with their PMTE at normal university fail to affect their SCK changes,their CCK and MTOE interaction are unable to forecast their SCK increase,and their CCK interact with their MTE fail to significantly predict their SCK growth.(5)There is no obvious difference between the four majors in the department of mathematics and elementary education for a primary school mathematics teacher from the perspective of SCK and MTE.The authors summarize,discuss and reflect on the results of this study,eventually illustrate the limitations of the study and give some suggestions and further research questions.The innovation of this research:(1)Exploring the relationship between the two major areasThe teachers' efficacy and teachers' SCK belong to the two major areas of teacher beliefs and teaching knowledge,and researching the relationship between these two areas which is still rare in China especially no precedents in domestic about the study of pre-service mathematics teachers' efficacy and SCK.(2)Design of parallel questionnaireIn the questionnaire,four sets of parallel questionnaires were designed for the measurement of CCK and SCK of normal students and the validity of parallel questionnaires were tested.The four sets of test questionnaires were used respectively for math normal students' four tests according to different stages of learning.Questionnaire design is the use of variant teaching theory.