Exploring factors affecting mathematics teaching effectiveness among pre-service primary mathematics student-teachers

This study investigated factors affecting mathematics teaching effectiveness among pre-service primary mathematics student-teachers. The sample consisted of twenty-four primary mathematics student-teachers, twelve take mathematics as their major subject and other twelve take mathematics as their minor subject in their Bachelor of Education programmes. Data sources were the Mathematics Teaching Supervision Form and post lesson interviews. This study found that Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is the crucial factor leads to effective mathematics teaching. However, it is surprising that Subject Content Knowledge (SCK) has no statistically relationship with Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and Teaching Effectiveness (TE). Besides, and surprisingly, mathematics minor student-teachers had better PCK than mathematics major student-teachers. The result indicated that female student-teachers taught better than male student-teachers. The supervisions also indicated that female student-teachers' instructional strategies were more creative and well designed than male student-teachers.