An investigation of the perspectives and implementation of variation theory by pre-service primary mathematics teachers in Hong Kong /

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Student Projects

2022

Li, Yuhan

Hong Kong : Education University of Hong Kong

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Hong Kong has embarked on a positive road of education reform since the beginning of the 21st century. To facilitate students to cope better with their challenges and needs, the Curriculum Development Council launched "Learning to Learn - The Way Forward in Curriculum Development" in 2001. These reforms promoted student-centered learning and teaching in contrast to the traditional teacher-oriented education. Under the context of education reform, Variation Theory (VT) was one of the most important new theories have tried out. At present, hundreds of primary and secondary schools have implemented VT in different subjects, including mathematics. Previous research showed that VT has been introduced in the course titled "learning study" to the previous pre-service teachers in the Education University of Hong Kong since 2007. Pre-service teachers, to some extent, determine the future of education (Diana, 2019). They had the chance to experience the reform and had the chance for further improvement. However, previous research concentrated on the implementation and perspectives of VT by in-service teachers. These studies did not include the implementation and perspectives of VT by pre-service mathematics teachers in Hong Kong.This study aimed at investigating the perspectives and implementation of variation theory by pre-service primary mathematics teachers in Hong Kong. Qualitative research methods were adopted. There are 6 pre-service primary mathematics teachers who participated in this study by the Purposive Sampling method. It was found that 1) Perspectives. All six participants preferred to use online resources to understand students' learning content. They believed the four functions of V3 guide them to use VT to design teaching activities. They considered Contrast as the easiest operated and the most effective function of V3. Half of the participants missed the importance of critical features. 2) Implementation. Six participants had different topics of teaching experiences related to VT. Two-thirds of the participants did not choose online resources to understand students' learning content. Conversely, half of the participants chose to understand students' learning content by checking the assignments. For critical features, half of the participants did not list them in their lesson plan. Besides, five participants chose contrast as one of the functions to design the learning content which was consistent with the perspectives. What's more, speech intelligibility, organization and presentation skills, and the trade-off between textbooks and VT were the difficulties faced by pre-service teaching found by video observation

LG51.H43 hp BEd(P)-MA 2022eb Liy

https://educoll.lib.eduhk.hk/records/U4dKqwhB