The Nature of a Method Course for Prospective Secondary Mathematics Teachers

The Nature of a Method Course for Prospective Secondary Mathematics Teachers

Through this study, we aimed to capture the nature of a mathematics method course, called "the Curriculum Development and Teaching Methods in Mathematics Education" which is a pedagogy course for teaching for secondary school mathematics taught at a university located in a south eastern part of South Korea. The research participants include three junior students who took the methods course and a local high school math teacher with two professors. The research has three parts. First, we designed a method course to prepare the junior or senior students for a teaching practicum. The individual students gave a mini lecture about a secondary mathematical topic as a course requirement. Second, the three students watched a classroom video-clip of the high school teacher and analyzed his instruction before the actual classroom visits. Furthermore, by "Let's Learn" program for students, the course was associated with a local community through the students and so that they could visit the teacher's classroom three times to observe his math classroom teaching. The students discussed the difference between their own mini lectures and the actual math classroom teaching to develop an understanding of what it entails to teach an actual math class. Third, the first author supervised the students' activities in the program including their report for it to bring out their findings to the class of the method course. We found out this method course provided the students with the experience of various aspects of actual math lesson as well as learning theories about the pedagogy for teaching for secondary school mathematics. We conclude that this course gives a model for the method course in mathematics education for secondary school mathematics.