The educational reform in Peru and the challenge to transform teacher education programs. A study of future teachers' opportunities to learn, knowledge for teaching, and beliefs related to mathematics teaching

Peruvian students at both the elementary and the secondary level have shown poor results in evaluations of mathematics achievement in recent years. In addition, research has found that teachers are not implementing the curriculum as expected; traditional practices of teaching are still present in classrooms. These problems have driven a school curriculum reform which recommends a student-centered instructional approach for mathematics teaching. Within this frame, mathematics teaching requires more attention to students' thinking, through problem solving, reasoning, and communication of their thinking. The principles and processes adopted by the curriculum call for change, and teacher education programs have to answer to these demands by preparing teachers with professional competencies that allow them to enact these ideals in their classrooms. The reform poses the need for future teachers to adopt a different view of mathematics teaching and requires that future teachers have the pedagogical knowledge necessary to develop the processes and content mandated in the curriculum.;This study addressed the research question: How do teacher education programs in Peru respond to the challenges posed by the current educational reform for mathematics teaching, and to what extent are such responses fulfilling the reform's demands? The study examined the opportunities to learn to teach mathematics provided by five teacher education programs in Lima to future elementary teachers. The mathematical pedagogical content knowledge and beliefs related to mathematics teaching of future teachers were also examined and considered as outcomes of the opportunities to learn. Crossectional data of two cohorts (first-year students and fifth-year students) in each institution were collected in order to examine any effect of the cohort on the outcome variables. Data source were mainly institutional documents and a questionnaire for future teachers. Institutional documents (syllabi of mathematics-related courses) were used to analyze the intended curriculum, and the future teacher questionnaire collected information on opportunities to learn, beliefs, and knowledge. The instruments and study framework were adapted from the TEDS-M comparative study.;Regarding opportunities to learn, the findings show differences in the curriculum to which future teachers were exposed in order to learn to teach mathematics; while some institutions mostly covered the mathematics topics needed to teach the school curriculum, other institutions were not providing the content knowledge required to teach mathematics. The findings also showed that future teachers were not exposed to content on mathematics education pedagogy that would allow them to have a more critical view of mathematics teaching.;Regarding the outcome variables, knowledge and beliefs, there were no significant differences by cohort but there were by institution. Student teachers from both cohorts showed similar patterns of beliefs about mathematics' nature, learning, and achievement, which mostly were compatible with the reform ideals. Findings related to mathematical pedagogical content knowledge showed low performance of student teachers from both cohorts; this was true even for cases of programs that consistently seemed to provide future teachers with opportunities to learn to teach mathematics. These results are critical for the purposes of the reform since they suggest that future teachers are graduating without the knowledge needed to implement the curriculum, and consequently to enhance students' learning.