Building a Knowledge Base: Understanding Prospective Elementary Teachers' Mathematical Content Knowledge

This survey of the literature summarizes and reflects on research findings regarding elementary preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) mathematics conceptions and the development thereof. Despite the current focus on teacher education, peer-reviewed journals offer a surprisingly sparse insight in these areas. The limited research that exists chiefly presents views of PSTs’ reasoning at singular points during a term, thus focusing on conceptions almost to the exclusion of the their development. We summarize the current findings, which are a beginning of a collective understanding of PSTs’ mathematical content knowledge. We believe much more work is needed to understand how PSTs can best develop their content knowledge. This is a call to the community to produce such peer-reviewed research.