Getting knowledge ready for teaching through situated assignments? An intervention study in initial mathematics teacher education

Abstract Research on teacher education is increasingly concerned with how pre-service teachers learn to apply professional knowledge to instructional demands. From a cognitive perspective, this requires transforming declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge usable in teaching. Therefore, a distinction can be made between mastering the demands of lesson preparation and evaluation (slow, deliberate; reflective competence) and mastering interactive classroom demands (fast, spontaneous; action-related competence), which may involve different knowledge transformation processes. However, systematic research on and the implementation of learning opportunities that foster pre-service teachers’ ability to apply knowledge to instructional demands remain limited. Instead, initial pre-service mathematics teacher education typically focuses on the acquisition of decontextualized declarative knowledge, which often remains inert and ineffective for teaching. However, cognitive theories suggest that such transformation may be supported by learning opportunities that engage pre-service teachers with instructional demands in increasingly situated ways. To address this assumption, we developed a short-term intervention to promote the reflective and action-related competences and to investigate the underlying learning mechanisms. In a pre-post intervention study with 187 pre-service mathematics teachers, we compared three intervention formats that differed in their degree of situatedness, ranging from abstract exercises to situated text and video vignettes. Using ANCOVA analyses, results indicate a small but significant increase in reflective competence, with the video-based group outperforming the text-based group. Implications for mathematics teacher education and research on situated learning opportunities are discussed.