Research Trends on Teacher Training in Mathematics Education : Focusing on Situated Approach

On mathematics education research in Japan, although research on “students” and “teaching materials (mathematical contents)” has been actively conducted, only a small number on “teachers” have been done. However, mathematics teacher education research should be regarded more as it is important for teachers to teach well. In this paper, we reviewed the positioning and problems of research on mathematics teacher education and how mathematics teachers’ ability is attained. We focused on themes such as a situated approach raised by Kaiser et al. (2017), “noticing” (Sherin et al., 2011) and teacher’s perception, interpretation and decision making (Blömeke et al., 2015). Then, we examined how a teacher’s knowledge (e.g., Pedagogical Content Knowledge by Shulman (1986, 1987) and Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching by Ball et al. (2008)) and views on mathematics (see, e.g., Dossey, 1992) is intrinsically linked to their mathematics teaching competence. Furthermore, we outlined the purpose and goal of mathematics education, and examined these previous studies. Finally, we concluded that “ability for mathematics teachers to teach well” was directly linked to teaching being a method “to enrich their knowledge and views on mathematics and to properly grasp the immutability and fashion of mathematics education”. Also, Ball (2011, p.xxi) put forward “Noticing is not purely neutral attention, but culturally shaped perception”. Because a situated approach depends on the culture of a country, we pointed out the necessity of considering the cultural aspects for mathematics teachers’ pre-service and in-service teacher training.