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Beliefs Of Primary Teachers About Mathematics And Its Teaching And Learning: Views From Singapore, Philippines, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan And Australia

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Beliefs Of Primary Teachers About Mathematics And Its Teaching And Learning: Views From Singapore, Philippines, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan And Australia

Author: Bob Perry, Catherine Vistro-Yu, Peter Howard, Ngai-Ying Wong & Fong Ho Keong

Publication Year: 2002

Abstract

The authors have been working, separately as well as collaboratively, on the area of
teachers' beliefs about mathematics and its learning and teaching for many years. In this
paper, they report on the use of one instrument to ascertain measures ofthe beliefs of a total
of 1254 primary school teachers in a number of different cultural contexts. The stimulus for
this combined, cross-cultural study has been the variations in results achieved by students in
international studies such as the TIMSS and TIMSS-R and the strong evidence that
teachers' beliefs about mathematics and its learning and teaching play a critical role in
determining how teachers facilitate their students' learning. Hence, differences in teacher
beliefs may be one reason for the measured differences in student achievement. The results
of the study clearly show that teachers' beliefs in all of the samples can be adequately
described in terms of the statements in the survey and that there are there are marked
differences in response to these statements across the different groups of teachers.

Type: research paper

Bob Perry, Catherine Vistro-Yu, Peter Howard, Ngai-Ying Wong Fong Ho Keong

Beliefs Of Primary Teachers About Mathematics And Its Teaching And Learning: Views From Singapore, Philippines, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan And Australia

Short Communications & Round Tables

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