Mathematics Secondary School Teachers of Beliefs, Teaching Practices and Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Abstract

This study was conducted to propose a model that consists of beliefs in mathematics, teaching practices and pedagogical content knowledge. Data was obtained from 254 mathematics teachers (203 females and 51 males) from selected secondary schools using stratified sampling. Teachers' variables, demographics, beliefs in mathematics, teaching practices (TP), and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) were all employed as the variables of the study. Specifically, mathematical beliefs are about the nature of mathematics, teaching and learning. TP include both teacher-centered and student- centered instruction. PCK consists of their knowledge of the subject content, the knowledge of the students and their knowledge of pedagogy, particularly in algebra, which focuses on quadratic functions and quadratic equations. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied in the data analysis. Frequency values and percentages have been applied to the respondents' profile information, while structural model is the inferential statistics in this study. Mathematics beliefs and teaching practices were confirmed to be significant by the structural equation modelling to be in this study. However, it was found that there was no link between mathematics beliefs and PCK, between pedagogical content knowledge and teaching practice. The enhancement of the teacher's professional development program to improve their teaching efficiency as well as their teaching quality should therefore be considered as early as the pre-service level.