Preservice Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching: Focus on Lesson Planning and Reflection

Mathematics teacher educators have suggested that preservice mathematics teachers' (PMTs') practices provide evidence of their Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT). In an effort to explore connections between MKT and PMTs' practices, we developed a framework that operationalizes Ball et al.'s (2008) six MKT domains in terms of approximations of practice. We then used our framework to investigate which domains were evidenced in eleven PMTs' lesson plans and how PMTs described MKT in their lesson plan reflections. We found Knowledge of Content and Teaching most evidenced and Horizon Content Knowledge least evidenced. Also, PMTs made few instances of Knowledge of Content and Students as they struggled to address students' mathematical thinking in their plans. We propose alternative forms of approximations of practice to optimize PMTs' opportunities to demonstrate and conceptualize MKT. [For the complete proceedings, see ED630210.]