Developing elementary teachers’ competence to teach foundational mathematical literacy can be advanced by engaging them in the full cycle of designing, enacting, and reflecting on customized curricula for the students with learning difficulties in their own classrooms. This study analyzes the professional development of 20 elementary teachers who participated in a practice-based teacher education program centered on teaching unit design, examining how their competence to teach foundational mathematical literacy is manifested from a teacher knowledge perspective. Qualitative data—including teachers’ teaching units, reflection journals, and audio recordings—were collected; we first conducted holistic coding to derive themes, then carried out a conceptual analysis to specify constituent elements of teacher knowledge. As a result, the participating teachers’ knowledge was manifested in four categories and twelve elements, situated within three thematic contexts: foundational literacy instruction for (1) understanding the principles of procedures, (2) mastering procedures, and (3) fostering student engagement. The paper discusses the meanings and significance of these teacher knowledge and offers practical implications for designing and implementing programs to develop teachers’ competence to teach foundational mathematical literacy.
Song et al. (Tue,) studied this question.