Secondary Mathematics Preservice Teachers Beginning Story

The purpose of this study was to determine how four preservice secondary mathematics teachers' experiences in learning how to teach shaped their development as teachers of low-achieving students. This narrative inquiry focused on their expectations, efficacy, mathematical myths beliefs, mathematical knowledge for teaching, and ability to have a caring relationship with their students. Two sources of practice based belief development (high school experiences and helping others) were identified as affecting the participants' stories. From these experiences as students, they developed the tendency to teach the way they wanted to be taught. As a positive implication, the participants learned to communicate mathematics in multiple ways. Conversely, three of them indicated a deficit model approach where they othered low-achieving students because they were not like them and were perceived as needing to be fixed. Furthermore, the deficit model approach seemed to impede the formation of caring relationships and the development of classrooms focused on problem solving. These results help identify the importance of Knowledge of Content and Students (KCS) in teaching low-achieving students well. Additionally, the participants appeared to need cognitive conflict such as classroom management issues before they realized they had false efficacy and lacked sufficient KCS. The study also gives some insight that caring relationships are diverse, evolving, and difficult to investigate. Most importantly, the results identified possible issues that preservice teachers should be aware of and pay attention to if they are going to develop into effective teachers of low-achieving students.