Maths4Primary Teachers is a collaborative design-based research intervention into mathematics teaching in Initial Teacher Education. Mathematics lecturing staff from public universities participate in a community of practice to design, trial, and research the impact of mathematics modules on student teacher knowledge.
Maths4Primary teachers is a national collaborative project that brings together mathematics teacher educators across South African universities to co-design, trial, and strengthen primary mathematics teacher education through research-informed and design-based coursework.
South Africa continues to face persistent challenges in the quality of mathematics teaching in the Foundation and Intermediate Phases. Research and national assessments have highlighted weak conceptual understanding of mathematics among many teachers and limited improvement in the mathematical knowledge of Bachelor of Education students, signalling the need to strengthen Initial Teacher Education.
Maths4Primary Teachers responds to this challenge by bringing together mathematics teacher educators from universities across South Africa to collaboratively design, trial and refine research-informed coursework. Through iterative implementation and continuous evaluation, M4PT strengthens student-teacher learning while building evidence to improve mathematics teacher education.
“Strengthening early mathematics teacher education through collaboration, research and evidence-based coursework development.”
M4PT arose from evidence of poor performance across universities in the PrimTEd mathematics assessment and builds on the ‘Maths Intensive’ short course developed at the University of Johannesburg. All modules align with the PrimTEd standards developed under DHET guidance.
Since its inception in 2021, Maths4Primary Teachers has expanded to more than 11 participating institutions, engaged over 30 mathematics teacher educators, reached more than 6,000 student teachers, and developed three mathematics coursework modules.
Bring together mathematics teacher educators from participating universities to establish a collaborative community of practice, share expertise and identify priorities for strengthening mathematics teacher education.
Collaboratively develop and refine research-informed coursework, learning materials and assessments aligned with the PrimTEd mathematics standards.
Universities implement the coursework within Initial Teacher Education programmes while student teachers complete pretests, quizzes, Tangos and posttests to generate evidence of learning.
Analyse implementation and assessment data, reflect across institutions, and use the findings to improve coursework, strengthen implementation and inform future research.
Dissemination of findings from design-based research and implementation, alongside analysis of their impact
on student teacher learning and mathematics teacher education programmes:
Evidence-based evaluation that synthesizes implementation data, student teacher outcomes and lecturer reflections:
M4PT welcomes collaboration with universities, researchers, funders and organisations
committed to strengthening mathematics teacher education.
