An exploration of how mathematics teacher educators invite pre-service teachers to participate in lessons about the teaching of number concepts and operations in early years.

Abstract

This study explores the nature of pre-service teachers participation in their lessons on how to teach number concepts and operations to learners in early years of primary school. The paper is part of a qualitative case study aimed at exploring how pre-service teacher education prepares pre-service teachers to teach number concepts and operations in early years (Grades 1-4) in Malawi. This paper reports on findings from two mathematics teacher educators. The lessons were analyzed using the Mathematics Discourse in Instruction framework. The analysis involved segmenting the lessons into episodes, each of which was recognized by change in content focus. Findings indicate that the preservice teachers were mostly invited to participate through answering yes/no questions or supplying one-word responses to the teacher educators' unfinished sentences. Implications of these findings are discussed.