Future teachers' competence to plan a lesson

Sigrid Blömeke, Lynn Paine, Richard T. Houang, Feng-Jui Hsieh, William H. Schmidt, M. Teresa Tatto, Kiril Bankov, Tenoch Cedilll, Leland Cogan, Shin Il Han, Marcella Santillan and John Schwille have written an article entitled Future teachers’ competence to plan a lesson: first results of a six-country study on the efficiency of teacher education. The article was published online in ZDM last week. The paper presents data from four countries in relation to the study called: "Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21)" (see webpage!). The entire MT21 report is available for free download at the project webpage. Here is a copy of the abstract:

The study "Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21)" focuses beyond others on the measurement of teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge (GPK). GPK is regarded as a latent construct embedded in a larger theory of teachers’ professional competence. It is laid out how GPK was defined and operationalized. As part of an international comparison GPK was measured with several complex vignettes. In the present paper, the results of future mathematics teachers’ knowledge from four countries (Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, and the US) with very different teacher-education systems are presented. Significant and relevant differences between the four countries as well as between future teachers at the beginning and at the end of teacher education were found. The results are discussed with reference to cultural discourses about teacher education.