The Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M): Policy, Practice, and Readiness to Teach Primary and Secondary Mathematics in 17 Countries. Technical Report

The Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), conducted under the aegis of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), was designed to inform policy and practice in mathematics teacher education. For educational policymakers, TEDS-M contributes data on institutional arrangements that are effective in helping future teachers become sufficiently knowledgeable in mathematics and related teaching knowledge. For the teacher educators who design, implement, and evaluate teacher education curricula, TEDS-M contributes a shared terminology, a shared database, and benchmarks for examining their teacher education provision against what has proved possible and desirable to do in other settings. For mathematics teachers in schools, TEDS-M provides a better understanding of what qualified teachers of mathematics learn about the content and pedagogy of mathematics during their preservice education, as well as about the arrangements and conditions conducive to acquisition of this knowledge. For educators in general and for informed laypersons, TEDS-M provides a better understanding about what and how teachers learn as they prepare to teach. The TEDS-M joint-international research centers at Michigan State University (MSU) and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) worked from 2006 to 2011 with the study's national research coordinators (NRCs) in the 17 participating countries to develop, implement, and report on the findings of this study. TEDS-M asked three key questions: (1) What are the policies that support primary and secondary teachers' achieved level and depth of mathematics and related teaching knowledge? (2) What learning opportunities available to prospective primary and lower- secondary mathematics teachers allow them to attain such knowledge? and (3) What level and depth of mathematics and related teaching knowledge have prospective primary and lower-secondary teachers attained by the end of their preservice teacher education? The first research question was addressed through individual case study country reports, questionnaires, and interviews issued by the TEDS-M international study centers. The second and third research questions were answered via surveys of nationally representative samples of: (1) Teacher education institutions and programs; (2) Teacher educators; (3) Future primary school teachers preparing to teach mathematics; and (4) Future lower-secondary school teachers also preparing to teach mathematics. The rest of this report presents the technical details associated with TEDS-M. A brief description of the content of each chapter is provided in Chapter 1. Individual chapters are authored by different groups of contributors and present references, exhibits, and notes as appropriate. Appended are: (1) TEDS-M 2008 Route Questionnaire; (2) TEDS-M Guidelines on Writing Country Reports; (3) Characteristics of National Samples: Implementations of the International Sampling Design in Participating Countries; (4) TEDS-M Sampling Frame Questionnaire and Forms; (5) Mobilizing National Support and Recruiting Institutions; (6) Future Primary Teachers' OTL and Belief Indices: International Reliability and Descriptive Statistics; (7) Future Secondary Teachers' OTL and Belief Indices: International Reliability and Descriptive Statistics; (8) Future Primary and Secondary Teachers' and Educators' OTL and Belief Scales: International Reliabilities; (9) Field Trial of the Institutional, Future Teacher, and Educator Questionnaires; (10) Model Fit Statistics for the Opportunity to Learn Scales; (11) Model Fit Statistics for the Opportunity to Learn Scales for Future Teachers and Educators by Country; (12) Changes for Calibration of MCK/MPCK Primary Items; (13) Changes for Calibration of MCK/MPCK Secondary Items; (14) Control Parameters for Model and Case Estimation: Mathematical Content Knowledge and Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge; (15) Mathematics Content Knowledge and Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge Scales; (16) TEDS-M Test Reliabilities; (17) Anchor Point Descriptions; (18) Program-Groupings: Future Teachers (Primary); (19) Program-Groupings: Future Teachers (Secondary); and (20) Listings of Organizations and Individuals Responsible for TEDS-M. [Contributors include Kiril Bankov; Alena Becker; Falk Brese; Soo-Yong Byun; Ralph Carstens; Jean Dumais; Lawrence Ingvarson; Yang Lu; Yukiko Maeda; Barbara Malak-Minkiewicz; Sabine Meinck; Ray Peck; Inese Berzina-Pitcher; Marc Reckase; Michael Rodríguez; Glenn Rowley; John Schwille; Sharon L. Senk; Maria Teresa Tatto; Alana Yu]