Assessing Primary and Secondary School Teachers’ Diagnostic Competence for Dealing with Students’ Errors

Teaching mathematics for understanding requires teachers to start from each student’s current level of comprehension to provide effective pedagogical strategies that will meet the needs of their students and promote the building of further knowledge and skills. To do this, teachers’ diagnostic competence is needed. In particular, mathematical errors found in students’ work and statements are useful sources of information about their erroneous conceptualizations and hence a good opportunity for teachers to interpret and analyse students’ understanding and make decisions to provide targeted learning experiences. This contribution discusses three projects, two of which aimed at fostering future primary and secondary school teachers’ diagnostic competence for dealing with students’ errors by providing focused learning opportunities in the context of university seminars. The university courses as well as pre- and post-tests were developed based on a model of diagnostic processes in error situations. Relations between facets of the diagnostic competence for dealing with students’ errors, namely cause-diagnosis and preferences in dealing with errors, and other attributes of the preservice teachers were investigated. The third project explored deeper the characteristics of in-service teachers dealing with errors in teaching situations using videotaped lessons. This project thus adds a further perspective on the strategies, which were implemented in real teaching situations. Significant results of the three studies and the connections between them are discussed.