The quality of science education teachers’ work determines the effectiveness of education and science education programs in many respects. Given that the results of students are not the same for teachers with the same formal characteristics, we formulate the research problem: when assessing the effectiveness of teachers, we can distinguish a system of indicators that affect the effectiveness of education and educational programs. The purpose of this article is to analyze the quality of work of science education teachers in the Kirov region and their teaching practice. The leading research methods in this case are the concept of the third international study of teaching and learning “Teaching and Learning International Survey”, collecting data obtained through a questionnaire of science education teachers, analyzing the quality of work and conditions of pedagogical practices, statistical processing of the research results, modeling and conversations with heads of secondary schools and representatives of executive authorities. As a result of a study conducted in 2017–2020, in which 1146 teachers of secondary schools of the European part of Russia took part, including 310 science education teachers, the author of the article found: the workload of a school teacher of science education is 0.65; subjects teachers spend on average 42.2 hours every week to perform their official duties, urban teachers have more work than rural teachers; with age, teachers of science education have a partial redistribution of labor activity from teaching to administrative work; actual teaching takes 53% of working time in the structure of workload for teachers of science education; teachers evaluate the completeness of their knowledge upon completion of training at the level of 38% of the required level for performing labor activities; there is a predominant share of teachers with a moderate level of need for knowledge in most areas of professional development. The results of the study allow us to develop a set of group measures for training and methodological support of science education teachers. These measures should take into account the specifics of workload and the characteristics of professional deficits.

Using engineering design to teach science requires teachers to engage in noticing, interpreting, and responding to students’ needs in real-time. While research has begun to focus on how elementary teachers do so, less is known about how teachers instructionally support and optimize students’ ideas through engineering design feedback. In this study we investigate what instructional moves two elementary teachers’ employ to leverage students’ ideas and reasoning and create opportunities for students to exchange design feedback. Data were gathered using classroom observations of teachers’ implementations of a design task focused on sound and energy transformation. Observations were coded for teachers’ use of high-leverage practices, and event maps were created to chronicle teachers’ implementation of the task from start to finish. Event maps were analyzed and compared for discrete instructional activities and modes of classroom organization that supported opportunities for feedback. Findings suggested that while teachers used similar instructional moves, how and when they created opportunities for student design feedback differed, resulting in diverse ways of assessing and supporting students’ understandings. Implications suggest design feedback as both a purposeful and naturally present phenomenon throughout the design process, reflective of the nature of engineering design.

This article presents an international study that documented the conceptions of atomic models held by 1062 in-service high school science teachers from 58 countries. First, a previous study on pre-service science teachers’ conceptions of atomic models was successfully replicated as a pilot study with an international sample of in-service science teachers. Teachers’ conceptions were investigated by analysing their drawings of atomic models. Based on these results, a multiple-choice questionnaire was developed for the main study. This questionnaire collected data on teachers’ conceptions of atomic models, teachers’ knowledge about their students’ conceptions of atomic models, and teachers’ use of atomic models in the classroom. The results show that the teachers’ conceptions of atomic models are almost evenly distributed over six different atomic models. These models are the Bohr model, the Rutherford model, the probability model, the orbital model, the probability orbit model, and the wave model. The vast majority of teachers assume that their students’ conceptions are centred on two historical atomic models, namely the Bohr model and the Rutherford model. Furthermore, the majority of teachers prefer to use historical atomic models over modern atomic models in the classroom. However, the findings also highlight that the use of modern atomic models in the classroom is positively correlated with growing teaching experience, and that teachers’ conceptions of atomic models and their knowledge of students’ conceptions of atomic models significantly influence teachers’ classroom practice.

Preservice mathematics teachers' beliefs about actions related to the use of the technological tools in teaching mathematics may affect how they are going to use them in their classroom activities. However, there is a limited evidence of what beliefs they hold on their intended actions of using technological tools in teaching mathematics. This study presents two preservice high school mathematics teachers' actional beliefs related to their intended actions in teaching geometric transformations (GTs) using Geometer's Sketchpad (GSP). The study comprised of a series of five task-based qualitative interviews with each of two senior undergraduate preservice teachers at a medium-sized public university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. This study used a radical constructivist grounded theory (RCGT) with five assumptions—symbiosis, voice, cognition, adaptation, and praxis as a theoretical framework to guide the study process. The thematic findings of the study included four in vivo categories of their beliefs associated with actions of teaching GTs with GSP – assessment of student learning, engaging students in a group activity in exploring GTs with GSP, engaging students in individual activity in exploring GTs with GSP, and exploring GTs with GSP as 'suck it up and do it.' Pedagogical implications of these categories have been discussed.

As international concerns about the prevalence of out-of-field teaching have grown, so have discussions about how to support out-of-field teachers. In Ireland, the Professional Diploma in Mathematics for Teaching, a two-year professional development program, was created for out-of-field mathematics teachers. A pre-test, post-test, and final survey examined the program’s impact on participating teachers’ mathematical knowledge, confidence in teaching curricular content, and classroom practice. Findings offer evidence of development in participating teachers’ mathematical knowledge and self-efficacy after completing the program. They also raise important concerns about persistent weaknesses in participating teachers’ mathematical knowledge, particularly related to key areas of the curriculum.

In Nigeria, most teachers among other things lack the necessary teaching skills, and mastery of subject matter for effective teaching of mathematics at the secondary school level. These deficiencies have often resulted in high and repeated failure rates in national and standard mathematics examinations. The present study investigated the ability of mathematics teachers to construct practical and realistic word problems in bearing and distance toward mitigating the deficiencies. The research methods adopted were exploratory and descriptive surveys due to the need to explore and analyze the abilities using quantitative techniques. Sample consisted of 292 (35.48%) mathematics teachers who took part in the in-service training workshop organized by the Mathematical Association of Nigeria (MAN) in Plateau state, Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample that involved the workshop participants only. The instrument ‘construction of practical and realistic word problems in bearing and distance test (CPRWPBDT)’ was used for data collection while the analysis was carried out using simple percentages, mean scores and one-way ANOVA. The findings of the study among other things revealed that the mathematics teacher participants constructed practical and realistic word problems in bearing and distance within 91.67% completion rate, 70.45% of the problems constructed were within the context, at least 75% rate of correctness with little difficulties/errors was observed in sketching (65.90%), and reality (40.90%). The variations observed within the participants in the construction of the problems were statistically not significant. Thus it was recommended among other things that mathematics teachers should undergo regular in-service workshop training to help in developing essential skills themselves for constructing practical/realistic word problems in bearing and distance; and should avoid unnecessary errors for meaningful teaching and learning of bearing and distance.

Mathematics teaching efficacy is an important construct as confidence in one’s ability to teach influences teaching practices. This paper explores pre-service primary teachers’ mathematics teaching efficacy on entry to initial teacher education and the extent that pre-tertiary mathematics experiences and resultant beliefs affected their mathematics teaching efficacy. A mixed-methods approach combined the Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument (N=420) and qualitative interviews (N=30). The findings suggest medium personal mathematics teaching efficacy among participants with limited conceptions of what mathematics teaching involves. While uncertain regarding their immediate teaching ability, participants reported confidence regarding their potential. Mathematics teaching outcome expectancy was high; however, an undercurrent of conviction exists that external factors, most notably learners’ natural mathematical ability, are critical to student learning.

This paper reports an exploratory study on the pre-service teachers’ content knowledge on school calculus. A calculus instrument assessing the pre-service teachers’ iconic thinking, algorithmic thinking and formal thinking related to various concepts in school calculus was administered to a group of pre-service mathematics teachers. Their performance on five of the items is reported in this paper. Other than their good performance in the iconic recognition of stationary points, their recognition on points of inflexion, differentiability and notion of minimum points was relatively poor. In addition, they appeared to lack the algorithmic flexibility in testing the nature of stationary points and the formal thinking about definition of an extremum point. The implications of the findings are discussed.  

A mathematics instructor with limited knowledge of content and pedagogy has little room for improvement or novelty in the classroom or the ability to arouse students' interest in learning mathematics. This case study was conducted in a foundation center of one of the public universities in Malaysia. The target of current research was to investigate the influence of lesson study (LS) on lecturers’ pedagogical content and content knowledge. The LS group comprises of seven lecturers of the mathematics group and the researcher. The group collaboratively prepared a research lesson on the subject of even and odd functions. Data gathered through interviews and observations on the lecturers’ activities in discussion meetings. Data from observations and interviews were analyzed descriptively and through thematic analysis method respectively. The results of this study show lecturers improved their knowledge in content and pedagogy considerably about even and odd functions. They enhanced their teaching knowledge through collaborative work and sharing of experiences. It seems the findings of this research not only help lecturers to have better performance in teaching the even and odd functions but also encourage them to experience the LS approach in teaching other mathematical concepts.

The study on mathematical performance was significant enough to be studied further to measure students' self-efficacy. Although studies on student self-efficacy in math performance from a gender perspective were abundant, studies on this relationship from the perspectives of ethnic culture and gender were scarce. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the self-efficacy of Bugis Junior High School students in solving math problems based on gender. The researchers used an algebra problem in the context of the Bugis ethnic culture. For this data set, two of 25 students at a public junior high school in Bone, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, were interviewed based on ethnicity and gender. Qualitatively, the triangulation technique was employed for data analysis. The study results revealed that male students outperformed girls in terms of self-efficacy, namely magnitude, strength, and generality, in math performance. Furthermore, female students had lower self-efficacy in terms of confidence, supportive experience in completing math tasks, and confidence in their ability to complete math tasks in similar or different contexts, compared to male students, who had higher self-efficacy. This result provided new knowledge by exploring the characteristics of students' self-efficacy by integrating ethnicity and gender.

This paper reports on part of an ongoing large-scale research on the need to improve science teaching and learning through investigating the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) of biology teachers for the topic Biodiversity. Six factors have been seen to affect teacher PCK, i.e., content knowledge, knowledge of students, science teaching orientations, knowledge of assessment, knowledge of instructional strategies and knowledge of the curriculum. This research aimed to examine the teacher’s level of content knowledge (CK). A qualitative research paradigm was adopted, and a case study research design used. The case (unit of analysis) was Biology teacher CK, and the subjects were the four teacher participants purposively selected. Lesson observations, teacher interviews and learner questionnaires were used to collect data on teacher CK. A content knowledge analytical framework consisting of five constructs was designed and used to analyse the teacher CK and data triangulated with data collected from interviews and questionnaires. This research revealed that ‘A’ level Biology teachers’ CK vary from teacher to teacher depending on several factors which include teacher identity, planning, workshopping, and motivation among others. Of the four Biology teacher participants, two had adequate CK and the other two exhibited inadequate CK. Inadequate CK was attributed to lack of planning, non-exposure to workshops and lack of teacher motivation. Consequently, this research recommends supervision of teachers from school level to national level, a series of teacher workshops on the demands of the competence-based curriculum and constructive teacher identity as well as introduce factors that enhance teacher motivation. Further research on the content knowledge of Biology teachers in other learning areas is recommended.

Many research studies have been conducted on students’ or pre-service teachers’ geometric thinking, but there is a lack of studies investigating in-service teachers’ geometric thinking. This paper presents a case study of two high school teachers who attended the dynamic geometry (DG) professional development project for three years. The project focused on the effective use of dynamic geometry software to improve students’ geometry learning. The two teachers were interviewed using a task-based interview protocol about the relationship between two triangles. The interviews, including the teachers' work, were videotaped, transcribed, and analyzed based on the three levels of geometric thinking: recognition, analysis, and deduction. We found that the participating teachers manifested their geometric skills and thinking in constructing, exploring, and conjecturing in the DG environment. The study suggests that the DG environment provides an effective platform for examining teachers' geometric skills, and levels of geometric thinking and encourages inductive explorations and deductive skill development.

Out-of-field teaching in science is a phenomenon in many secondary schools across the world. While the reasons for out-of-field teaching are complex, its incidence is heightened in low socio-economic communities and in regional and remote school locations. Research on out-of-field science teaching in secondary schools has tended to focus on teacher competence, particularly in relation to pedagogical content knowledge. However, while teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices within their specialist subject are shown to be related, it is unclear how teachers’ beliefs and practices alter when teaching across subject boundaries. Using a boundary-crossing lens, where teachers engage in passing back and forth between different contexts, this study explored the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about their in-field and out-of-field discipline (science) and the connections to their teaching practice. Interview data, including a video-stimulated interview of a lesson in a teacher’s specialist field and then a subsequent out-of-field lesson, were analysed using the framework of a belief that investigated the relationships between in-field and out-of-field beliefs and practices. Findings indicate that those who teach science out-of-field revert to traditional ways of teaching, despite being more open and adventurous in their in-field discipline areas. However, there were significant instances of boundary crossing with their pedagogy to support their teaching – both in-field and out-of-field. These findings support the development of structured mechanisms and strategies to assist teachers to cross boundaries to establish new and unique interdisciplinary practices.

This study aims to describe the implication of the Aptitude Treatment Interaction (ATI) model integrated with character values to increase the students’ skill in solving mathematics story problems. This study applied a quasi-experimental research type using a non-equivalent control group design involving two classes with 30 students each. Data was collected using a test instrument for solving mathematics story problem. Data were analyzed using n-gain descriptive statistical analysis to see the increase in students' skill in solving mathematics story world problems. The results showed that the average score of student's aptitude in solving mathematics story problems is 91.26 which is in the category of very high. There is an increase in the students’ ability with score of an n-gain of 0.77 which is in the category of high. In addition, the results of observations related to the implementation of learning model of the ATI with a percentage of 87.5% in the category of very good. Thus, the character-based ATI learning model can be used to increase the students’ skill in solving mathematics story problem. In addition, it accommodates the character of students who are concerned with learning mathematics so that learning goals can be achieved both from cognitive and attitudinal aspects.

Reflection requires someone to think in deep and express the impression of a phenomenon or an event. Reflection can be defined as a mirror to look at and see the personal insights, feelings, motivation, or purposes of individuals within a particular context and practice in a realistic way. This study examined the nature of pre-service science teachers’ reflections during the last semester of the teacher education program. There were four cases as student-teachers attending science teacher education program in northwest region of Turkey. The qualitative data, written reflections and researcher field notes were utilized and analyzed through inductive methods. The results indicated that even though pre-service science teachers learned scientific practices and inquiry, they were not able to implement due to some constraints: mentor teachers forced them to teach on a traditional basis. They could only complete the required four-hour teaching practice. Student teachers reflected on their learning as becoming a science teacher, but their actions were restricted, and they could not find supportive community in school and classroom context.

The study investigated the impact of YouTube video assisted instructions (YVAI) on pre-service teachers’(PSTs) attitudes and academic performance in chemistry classroom. A quasi-experimental design was adopted for the study. One hundred and twenty (120) Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) pursuing primary education programme constituted the participants of the study. Sixty (60) PSTs each were non-randomly assigned to the Experimental Group (EG) and Control Group (CG). Data on PSTs’ attitude and performance were collected with PSTAS and GCPT respectively. The SPSS software version 20 was used to analyse the data to generate descriptive and inferential statistics. A non-parametric analysis was used in the inferential statistics. The attitude means rank (MR=78.62) of EG (U = 713.000, Z=-6.924, p <.001) was statistically higher than CG (MR=42.38) (U = 713.000, Z=-6.924, p <.001) after treatment. The EG after treatment recorded a mean rank (80.86) statistically higher than CG (40.14), U = 578.500, Z = -6.441, p <.001 after treatment. YVAI was proven as an effective instructional strategy that enhances learners’ altitudinal changes and performance. The study recommended the use of YouTube technological-driven instructions to support classroom instructions.

This study compares experts' and teachers' conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The study participants included teachers (n=20) enrolled in a graduate mathematics education course on PCK. Participants responded to two open-ended questions: a) describe in your own words what PCK is; b) provide an example of PCK. The responses were collected, qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed, and then compared to those suggested by experts to identify and describe the similarities and differences between teachers’ and experts’ conceptualizations using the Pareto analysis. Experts’ and teachers’ PCK components ranking was analyzed using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test. Even though the results of the quantitative analysis were not significant (e.g., the observed U-value is 32 whereas the critical value of U at p < .05 is 13), the qualitative discussion on the differences between expert and teachers’ ranking suggests insightful interpretation of priorities among PCK components across the two groups.