Math Anxiety in Math Methods Courses

Many elements contribute to pre-service teachers' experiences in learning to teach mathematics. The transition to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has forced educators to challenge traditional math instruction. This chapter presents three major contributing elements in pre-service teacher preparation to foster creativity as a central component and an inevitable outcome of learning to teach mathematics with particular applications to online learning settings. The first section discusses learning to teach math as a creative activity. Some concrete instructional strategies are offered that promote dialogue-rich learning environments. The second section reviews current trends in learning to teach math. The author posits pre-service teachers who have suffered traumatic experiences in learning mathematics must first acquire tools for clearing math anxiety and fear. The third section is a call to action to encourage teachers to participate in and construct learning communities to teach mathematics including the use of instructional technology to support online instruction.

Learning to Teach

This study explores pre-service EFL teachers’ experiences in learning to teach English at the teaching practicum program during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The study adopts a qualitative narrative inquiry to capture the pre-service EFL teachers’ events or stories experienced in their learning to teach at schools. Drawing on semi-structured interview data, we found that the majority of the pre-service EFL teachers forced themselves to understand digital literacy and be able to adopt various learning platforms such as Google Classroom, Youtube, Zoom meeting, and Whatsapp in the online teaching at the practicum program during COVID-19 Pandemic. They supposed that those ways were effective enough to deliver learning materials, interact with their students and achieve learning goals. However, during online teaching at the COVID-19 Pandemic, the teaching practicum program did not run well because during the process of online teaching the pre-service EFL experienced various challenges: poor internet connection, lack their participation, and negative attitude. Therefore, the strategies they employed to overcome the teaching challenges were creating a comfortable learning atmosphere by using certain learning platforms, communicating actively with the students’ parents to encourage their online participation, and growing their self-confidence and motivation.

THE USE OF GOOGLE MEET FOR ONLINE MICROTEACHING

The social distancing and the closure of schools during the Pandemic force both teachers and students to teach and study remotely. In order to facilitate pre-service teachers learning to teach, the instructor of the Microteaching who is also the researcher opted to use Google Meet (GM) as a teaching platform in Microteaching class. Aiming at uncovering the perspectives of pre-service teachers in using GM as an online teaching platform for teaching their peers, the current study involved the sixth semester students in Microteaching class as its research participants. The main data were obtained through open-ended questionnaire. To triangulate the data, the videos of five pre-service teachers’ teaching demonstrations and five students’ written reflections were also used as a source of data. The obtained data were analyzed thematically based on the emerging themes. In so doing, the researcher firstly read the results of the open-ended questionnaire and the students’ reflection closely and started codifying the data. The findings show that preservice teachers have positive impression toward the use of GM and consider that as useful in the pandemic time. In terms of the challenge they faced, internet connection was found to be the major obstacle in teaching peers using GM.

“Teaching Pronunciation is Always on my Mind”: A 5-year Longitudinal Study on a Japanese English Teacher’s Developing Practices and Cognition about Pronunciation

Systematic inquiry into second language teacher learning has been carried out for 3 decades, but research into learning to teach English pronunciation is just emerging. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by examining the long-term trajectory of a Japanese teacher of English learning to teach English pronunciation. The case study examined the development of the instructor’s practices and cognition (i.e., beliefs and knowledge) about English pronunciation over a 5-year period. A 13-week pronunciation-pedagogy course, a narrative frame that elicited the instructor’s self-reported pronunciation teaching practices, and 2 classroom observations followed by a semi-structured interview were used to collect data. The findings demonstrated that the 5-year development of the teacher’s practices and cognition was a complicated and non-linear process. Several contextual factors were identified as being responsible for the uneven development of the teacher-participant’s practices, cognition, and uptake of content taught in the pronunciation pedagogy course. 第二言語教師学習についての系統的な研究は、過去30年間において数多くなされてきた。一方で、英語の発音指導修得における研究は未だ萌芽的段階である。本研究は、英語の発音指導を修得した日本人英語教師を長期的に研究することでこのような溝を埋める試みである。本ケーススタディにおいて、五年間にわたり教師の実践と英語発音に対する認知（ビリーフや知識）の発達についての研究を行った。データ収集として13週間の発音教授法コース、教師の発音指導実践を引き出すためのナラティブフレーム、及び二度の授業観察、そしてそれに続く半構造化インタビューが用いられた。その結果、五年間にわたる彼らの教育実践と認知は複雑かつ非線形であることが確認された。被験者である教師たちの実践、認知、そして発音教授法コースを通して修得された内容の理解についての不規則な発達の背景にはいくつかの文脈的要因が存在することが示唆された。