Preservice Teachers’ Acceptance of Number Concepts Instruction in Base 8

Teacher preparation is an area in which there should be constant revamping. Research is continually showing us better ways to educate students, so in turn, teacher preparation programs should be changing as well. Pre-service teachers can enter universities with certain beliefs about teaching and learning that are not congruent with current reforms in education (Stohlmann, Cramer, Moore, & Maiorca, 2014). Research suggests that teacher beliefs are critical to student success (Achieve, 2012), and that while those beliefs are rooted in years of learning in a specific fashion, through proper training, those beliefs can be changed. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to discover the reason pre-service teachers in an elementary mathematics content course accepted instruction on mathematics in another base system. Results from this study showed pre-service teachers felt instruction in base 8 was useful to them in preparing to enter the teaching profession. Learning in base 8 made them remember the frustrations and struggles they encountered as elementary school students. Results suggest that pre-service teachers could be more prepared to teach concepts and more likely to be patient with their future students if taught in base 8.