Pre-University Educational Pathways and Mathematical Literacy Among Prospective Elementary Teachers: A Multidimensional Analysis

This quantitative study examines the association between pre-university educational pathways and mathematical literacy among 227 first-year prospective elementary teachers at a Spanish university. Although experienced teacher educators are informally aware of this association, its relationship with specific dimensions of mathematical literacy has not been sufficiently investigated. Mathematical literacy was operationalized through processes and capabilities from the PISA 2012 framework and assessed using five released items. We combined descriptive and non-parametric group comparisons with principal component and cluster analyses, supported by qualitative inspection of written responses. Descriptive analyses indicated generally low and heterogeneous performance, whereas group comparisons suggest that the science and technology pathway is associated with higher performance across all processes and skills, and that social science students generally perform better than those who followed the humanities and other pathways. In addition, three profiles of students arose according to high, medium and low performances. These groups were found in correspondence to technological, social sciences, and humanities and other pre-university studies, respectively. Some implications of these findings for prospective elementary teacher education are also discussed.