The academic from the University of Chile provided details of a project whose main objective is to contribute to the improvement of the preparation to teach mathematics of future basic education teachers.

The conference “Development of Texts for Teacher Training: the Experience of the FONDEF REFIP Project” was held in the Pentagon Room, given by Dr. Salomé Martínez, academic at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile. The activity organized by the Faculty of Humanities of the ULS and framed in the XXXIII institutional anniversary, was attended by the academic vice-rector, Dr. Jorge Catalán, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Dr. María Zúñiga, university authorities, directors, academics and a large number of University students.

The initiative, which is already being finalized, consisted of the development of support material and resources for the training of Basic Education teachers in Mathematics. The process of creating this material, led by a team of disciplinary and Mathematics pedagogy experts, included the stages: the development of texts for Pedagogy students, the piloting of the material, and the creation of interactive resources and material. for the trainer, evaluation of the texts and production of the same. 

The texts - commented Dr. Martínez - are validated through pilot experiences in 16 universities in the country in which around 70 trainers and 5 thousand students participated. In addition, they are aligned with the guiding standards for graduates of Pedagogy courses in Basic Education and instruments were used to measure their impact and collect information regarding topics that affect initial teacher training. They were also complemented with material for the trainer that incorporates the experiences arising from the pilots, and were evaluated by experts. 
The speaker explained that in its preparation, interviews were conducted with academics, students, classroom teachers and the advisory committee to decide the attributes. Likewise, she explained that the texts address the dimensions of the standards that cross the axes (knowing mathematics to teach and knowing how to teach mathematics) and that favor the integration of disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge. ''Its contents are consistent with the school curriculum and the focus is mathematical knowledge to teach, which includes mathematical knowledge and pedagogical knowledge of mathematics,'' she said. 

Complementary research

The professor from the University of Chile explained that the project allowed research related to psychosocial phenomena relevant to the initial training of teachers. Voluntary online surveys were administered to the Pedagogy students who participated in the piloting of the texts about beliefs about Mathematics and also mathematical anxiety (fear of Mathematics that usually derives from unpleasant experiences) and expectation teacher. 

Regarding mathematics anxiety, he mentioned that through the application of the survey "we realized that there are three main and very reasonable factors: anxiety towards tests, anxiety towards numerical operations and anxiety towards Mathematics classes." He added that in the group of students with high mathematics anxiety, there are many with a mention, that is, "taking the mathematics mention is not a guarantee that the student does not have mathematics anxiety," he assured. 

Furthermore, it indicated that mathematics anxiety affects mathematics beliefs. ''We saw that indeed students with greater mathematics anxiety are more likely to believe that mathematics is a fixed skill (...) so it is very important to address mathematics anxiety,'' said the academic.

Regarding biases in the formation of expectations, he pointed out that the study carried out with future teachers showed that in the cases presented of schoolchildren with problems in Mathematics there are no significant effects on the formation of opinions on personal characteristics of the students, 'nor the socioeconomic level, nor does gender make them give more positive characteristics to some students than others,'' commented the expert, adding that there are significant effects of the sex of the student and the mathematical anxiety of the future teacher, since men receive expectations higher academic scores than women and future teachers with greater mathematics anxiety deliver lower expectations. Furthermore, future teachers with greater mathematics anxiety are more predisposed to send students with problems to special classes.

Regarding the cases raised with problems in Language, he expressed that it was observed that there is a significant effect of sex and socioeconomic level on the personal characteristics of the schoolchildren. Children with a lower socioeconomic level and who have language problems receive fewer evaluations of personal characteristics. And there are significant effects only for the socioeconomic level with respect to teaching expectations, students with a lower socioeconomic level receive lower expectations for their subsequent performance and there are no significant effects in the assignment of support measures in the class. 

Finally, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Dr. María Zúñiga, thanked Dr. Salomé Martínez for the presence and the delivery of the texts on Numbers, Geometry, Algebra, and Data and Chance, along with highlighting the invitation made by the academics to teachers to carry out research based on practice.