Elementary Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Mathematics.

The purpose of this study was to characterize and compare novice and experienced elementary teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of three major topics in mathematics: whole number operations, fractions, and geometry. Twenty-six preservice elementary teachers and 28 experienced kindergarten through sixth grade teachers participated in this study. Data were collected via the Survey on Teaching Mathematics (Rich, Lubinski & Otto, 1994), a researcher-designed instrument that assists in describing pedagogical content knowledge. The results indicate that experienced teachers possess a greater conceptual understanding of whole number operations than do novice teachers, but that both novice and experienced teachers possess primarily a procedural knowledge of fractions. In addition, the results indicate that both novice and experienced teachers think that a good teacher is one who shows and tells students how to do the work.