Perceptions of Elementary Pre-service Teachers’ Confidence to Teach Mathematics

In this study, we examine the perceptions of pre-service teachers’ confidence to teach mathematics. Previous studies have focused on the relationship between mathematics anxiety and teacher efficacy, mathematics anxiety and content knowledge, or teacher efficacy and content knowledge. In order for educational researchers to understand the dynamics of teaching mathematics with confidence, we examine the relationships among all three constructs: mathematics anxiety, teacher efficacy, and content knowledge. Two well-known instruments, Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument (MTEBI) and the short version of Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS-S), were completed by 117 elementary pre-service teachers at a state college. Along with these instruments, pre-service teachers' Content Specialty Test in Mathematics (CST-Math) scores from the New York State Teacher Certification Examinations were used as the measurement for their overall content knowledge. Our results indicated that there were significant correlations between each pair of the three constructs. While teacher efficacy remained significantly correlated with mathematics anxiety and with content knowledge when holding the third construct constant, there was no significant correlation shown between mathematics anxiety and content knowledge when holding teacher efficacy constant.