Examining Opportunities in Teacher Preparation Programs That Integrate Pre-Service Secondary Teachers’ Experiences With Technology and Algebra

Most recently, the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences has advocated for incorporating technology in secondary mathematics classrooms. Colleges and universities across the United States are incorporating technology to varying degrees into their mathematics teacher preparation programs. Additionally, a prominent focus of current mathematics education reform efforts involves preparing future secondary mathematics teachers to teach algebra due to a growing demand for algebra courses in middle school and high school. This study examines pre-service secondary mathematics teachers’ opportunities to expand their knowledge of algebra through the use of technology and to learn how to incorporate technology when teaching algebra in mathematics classrooms. Through this study, we explored the following research question: What opportunities do secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs provide for PSTs to encounter technologies in learning algebra and learning to teach algebra? We examined instructor interviews, student interviews and course instructional materials as data collected from a pilot study of three Midwestern teacher preparation programs conducted by a larger project investigating opportunities teacher preparation programs provide pre-service secondary mathematics teachers to learn algebra and to learn to teach algebra. Our data suggest that not all secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs integrate experiences with technology across mathematics courses. More specifically, we found that mathematics education courses integrate technology through learning experiences more commonly than in mathematics courses, and the mathematics courses may provide few experiences with technology to PSTs beyond strictly computational.