Colleges of Education Students’ Mathematics Proficiency: Assessing Strategic Competency and Adaptive Reasoning during Supported Teaching in Schools

Researchers in mathematics education have established the distinction between mathematical understanding and mathematical thinking and that has resulted on the call for comprehensive assessment practices that focuses on both content and process. While it has been established that teacher knowledge is vital in teaching basic school pupils, less is known about colleges of education students’ proficiency levels at point of exit from the maiden B.Ed program in colleges of education in Ghana. This study reports how mathematics proficiency is partially used as mathematics assessment towards colleges of education students’ strategic competency and adaptive reasoning during supported teaching in schools. Mixed methods involving descriptive and explanatory designs were employed to gather quantitative and qualitative data for analysis. Results revealed that pre-service teachers are approaching proficiency whereby exhibiting more knowledge in strategic competency than adaptive reasoning in the mathematics content they will be teaching. Factors including program structure, sustained lesson reflections with mentors and quality of teaching experiences at partner schools aided in developing pre-service teachers’ proficiency. Although males attained higher proficiency scores than females, there was no statistically significant difference in proficiency levels between males and females. Recommendations suggest to further studies to explore the relationship between pre-service teachers’ mathematics proficiency and their mathematics self-efficacy.

Keywords: Mathematics proficiency, strategic competency, adaptive reasoning, Supported Teaching in Schools (STS), Student Reflective Journal (SRJ)