Teaching Reflections of Secondary Mathematics Final-Year Student Teachers

Abstract

Universities have the sole responsibility of producing teachers in most countries including South Africa. Part of teacher education involves school-based experiences where student teachers seek to integrate theory and practice. The purpose of this study was to explore how final-year secondary mathematics student teachers’ reflect on their school-based experiences. The three-step guided reflection conceptual framework was used to frame this study. A case study design was adopted with the self-reflection report as the data source. The participants were 39 teacher candidates registered for a final-year school-based experiences course majoring in mathematics and another science subject. The results indicated that guided reflection was appropriate to unravel instructional challenges and successes that student teachers went through in the six-month period. Moreover, student teachers perceived school-based experiences as impactful on their future teaching career, as an opportunity to gain teaching experience and to put theory into practice under the guidance of experience mentors. However, student teachers significantly encountered negative attitudes towards mathematics which complicated their efforts of instruction in all the topics. With low motivation levels to study mathematics, all topics were difficult to the learners and student teachers had to come up with new instructional strategies.