Abstract:

In the course of their undergraduate teacher training, prospective mathematics teachers need to take a number of disciplines as well as didactic training. The concept of teacher training aims to respond to the requirements of mathematics education. However, during the limited period of five years, it is impossible to cover all aspects in an exhaustive way. For this reason, some students believe that undergraduate preparation fails to achieve their expectations. Many research studies confirm that strong beliefs of prospective teachers about their readiness may significantly affect the quality of the teaching process. If teachers do not believe in their own skills and knowledge gained in undergraduate training, they are likely to show poor performance and face teaching-related problems not only in the cognitive area but also in classroom management.

The aim of the paper was to reflect on the beliefs about the effectiveness of teacher training of primary school teachers at the Faculty of Education at Palacký University Olomouc. The research was carried out in the summer semester of the academic year 2019/2020 and involved a total of 115 full-time students of the following two programmes: Teaching training for primary schools and Teacher training for primary schools and special education. The research was performed using a standardized questionnaire adopted from the international TEDS-M survey (2008), which examined prospective teachers’ readiness for teaching mathematics in terms of their mathematical and didactic skills. The questionnaire (as the only instrument) also focused in detail on prospective teachers’ beliefs as one of the main indicators of high-quality preparation.

The questionnaire included a total of six items, where students expressed their opinions on a six-point Likert scale (from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”). The items reflected the personality of the teacher, relevance of the learning content, provision of feedback, links to personal experience and overall coherence of the teaching topics. The results of the research suggested a general tendency of students to a positive assessment of undergraduate teacher training in all of these areas. The paper in detail reflects on the results of the research by means of basic descriptive statistics and describes the differences in the responses according to the predefined variable—study group membership.

It can therefore be concluded that the teacher training programme at the Faculty of Education meets the current educational requirements. Nevertheless, it is necessary take into account various new resources that could develop the programme in order to increase prospective teachers’ beliefs about their readiness.

Keywords:

Beliefs about program effectiveness, mathematics, primary education, prospective teachers, TEDS-M.