Pre-service primary mathematics teachers' opportunities to learn about school mathematics topics

Abstract

Opportunity to learn (OTL) is known to be a factor in successful learning during education programmes. The data reported here come from a wider study of primary mathematics teacher preparation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Here we report on the OTL that KSA pre-service primary mathematics teachers get of school-level mathematics during the mathematics pedagogy module (MPM) taken in semester 1 of their 4th (and final) year. The analysis of the data shows that the pre-service teachers received moderate opportunity to learn topics related to teaching primary school geometry, especially during the three sessions (out of eight) devoted to geometry. In contrast, they had little or no opportunity to learn topics related to teaching primary school algebra.