Diagnostic competentces of future teachers

Björn Schwarz, Björn Wissmach and Gabriele Kaiser have written an article entitled “Last curves not quite correct”: diagnostic competences of future teachers with regard to modelling and graphical representations. The article was published online in ZDM last week. Here is the abstract of their article:

The article describes the results of a national enrichment to the six-country study Mathematics Teaching in the 21st century (MT21)—an international comparative study about the efficiency of teacher education. The enrichment focuses on the diagnostic competence of future mathematics teachers as sub-component of teachers’ professional competence for which the evaluation of students’ solutions of a modelling task about the course of a racetrack is demanded. In connection with two sub-facets of the diagnostic competence, namely the competence to recognise students’ misconceptions and the competence of criteria-guided assessment of students’ solutions, typical answer patterns are distinguished as well as the frequency of their occurrence with regard to future teachers’ phase of teacher education and the level of school teaching they are going to teach in.