Spanish preservice primary school teachers’ pedagogical knowledge of numbers: results from TEDS-M / Conocimiento didáctico de los estudiantes españoles de magisterio sobre números: resultados en TEDS-M

Abstract

This paper describes and characterises Spanish preservice primary school teachers’ pedagogical knowledge on school mathematics, particularly in the number subdomain. The study conducts a conceptual analysis of the TEDS-M survey items on this type of knowledge and interprets the responses. We found that preservice teachers were able to recognise variables that affect the difficulty of arithmetic and proportionality problems, but showed difficulties in diagnosing errors committed by students and in graphically representing mathematical concepts and procedures and applying them to the teaching process. These results will be useful for the design of syllabi in the new Primary School Teaching degree.