Mathematics teachers’ beliefs about good teaching: A comparison between Estonia, Latvia and Finland

The article presents results from a cross-cultural NorBa-project “Mathematics teachers’ educational beliefs”. We report Estonian, Latvian and Finnish lower secondary mathematics teachers’ beliefs about good teaching. A principal component analyses identified a two-component structure of teachers’ beliefs about good teaching: (1) Reasoning and conceptual understanding and (2) Mastery of skills and facts. Cross-cultural differences were identified in both of these dimensions. Latvian teachers indicated the strongest agreement with reasoning and conceptual understanding, Estonian teachers with mastery of skills and facts, while Finnish teachers scored lowest on both dimensions. Moreover, we analysed the amount of teachers with different profiles with regard to these two dimensions.