Abstract
This paper describes five aspects of primary mathematics teacher education in Singapore: (a) the teaching profession in Singapore, (b) the structure of pre-service teacher education programs offered by the National Institute of Education, (c) self-reports of Singapore future primary mathematics teachers about the opportunities to learn mathematics-related contents offered by these programs, based on the TEDS-M (Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics) survey, (d) the performance of these future teachers in mathematics content knowledge and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge assessed by the TEDS-M study, and (e) the relationships of opportunities to learn with this performance. The paper concludes with some suggestions about how to improve the quality of initial teacher preparation in the areas of recruitment and training.
This project was funded by the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (EP No. 5/06 WKY). The released TEDS-M items are copyrighted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The analyses prepared for this paper and the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IEA, the TEDS-M Study Centers (Michigan State University and the Australian Council for Educational Research), the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, the National Institute of Education, or the Singapore Ministry of Education.
We wish to thank Dr. Glenn Rowley and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Originally published in ZDM—The International Journal on Mathematics Education.
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Wong, K.Y., Boey, K.L., Lim-Teo, S.K., Dindyal, J. (2014). The Preparation of Primary Mathematics Teachers in Singapore: Programs and Outcomes from the TEDS-M Study. In: Blömeke, S., Hsieh, FJ., Kaiser, G., Schmidt, W. (eds) International Perspectives on Teacher Knowledge, Beliefs and Opportunities to Learn. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6437-8_8
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