Pre-Service Teachers’ Beliefs About Students’ ‘Mathematical Digital Competency’

Mathematical digital competency (MDC) refers to an amalgam of students’ mathematical and digital competencies. We surveyed n = 372 secondary school pre-service-teachers (PSTs) in Germany and England to investigate their beliefs about students’ MDC. Furthermore, we scrutinized how PSTs’ beliefs about students’ MDC relate to PSTs’ beliefs about potentials and risks of teaching mathematics with digital mathematical tools, their self-efficacy and their epistemological beliefs. We found that PSTs acknowledge the benefits of digital mathematical tools yet frequently oppose the notion of an amalgam of students’ mathematical and digital competencies advocating instead for a pedagogical approach that emphasizes students’ capacity to be able to think about, explain and do mathematics without digital mathematical tools. Furthermore, we found that PSTs’ beliefs about students’ MDC were uncorrelated with PSTs’ self-efficacy beliefs and epistemological beliefs. Based on these results, we discuss possible contradictions in PSTs’ belief systems and how the results may help to better prepare future PSTs for developing students’ MDC. Furthermore, we suggest that teachers’ beliefs about students’ MDC are a critical part of teachers’ own MDC.