Preservice Teachers' Beliefs and Practice After Participating in an Integrated Content/Methods Course

There is substantial evidence that teachers' beliefs about mathematics impact their teaching of mathematics. Given this evidence, it is appropriate that teacher education programs assess their effectiveness, at least in part, on how well they nurture beliefs that are consistent with their philosophy of learning and teaching. To explore this perspective a study was conducted with preservice elementary teachers participating in an alternative certification program for teaching in an urban setting. Students were required to take 6 hours of mathematics and 6 hours of mathematics education taught as a seamless course over three semesters. Before and after the program students completed a Mathematics Belief Instrument. Descriptive statistics were used to study trends across the group (n=14). Higher mean scores were found in all three parts of the post survey. Qualitative data were collected over the year in the form of weekly teaching logs. Results suggest that the program was successful in changing preservice teacher beliefs.