The role of teachers’ knowledge of common student struggles in instruction and student learning

Teachers’ knowledge of common student struggles (KOCS) is an essential theoretical component of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. Yet the extent to which this type of knowledge is associated with teaching and student learning of mathematics remains unclear. In this study, we explored the association between teachers’ KOCS and the cognitive demand of the selected and enacted tasks as well as the mathematical coherence of the instruction for promoting conceptual understanding and their students’ learning. Focusing on the topic of ratios and proportional relationships, we collected data from 37 U.S. mathematics teachers and their 1,205 students in Grades 6 and 7. Our findings indicate that teachers’ KOCS is statistically significantly associated with the cognitive demand of the enacted tasks, the mathematical coherence of instruction for conceptual understanding, and students’ learning. These findings call for greater attention to developing teachers’ understanding of the common struggles students exhibit when learning mathematics topics, as well as their understanding of the underlying conceptual issues behind these struggles.