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In 1908, Felix Klein suggested that to mend the discontinuity that prospective secondary teachers face, university instruction must account for teachers’ needs. More than a century later, problems of discontinuity remain. Our project addresses the dilemma of discontinuity in university mathematics courses through simulating core teaching practices in mathematically intensive ways. In other words, we interpret teachers’ needs to include integrating content and pedagogy. We argue that doing so has the potential to impact teachers’ competence. To make this argument, we report fndings from the Mathematics of Doing, Understanding, Learning, and Educating for Secondary Schools (MODULE(S2)) project. The results are based on data from 324 prospective secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs) enrolled in courses using curricular materials developed by the project in four content areas (algebra, geometry, modeling, and statistics). We operationalized competence in terms of PSMTs’ content knowledge for teaching and their motivation for enacting core teaching practices. We examined pre- and post-term data addressing these constructs. We found mean increases in PSMTs’ outcomes in content knowledge for teaching and aspects of motivation. 

This Perspectives on Practice manuscript focuses on an innovation associated with “Engaging Teachers in the Powerful Combination of Mathematical Modeling and Social Justice: The Flint Water Task” from Volume 7, Issue 2 ofMTE. We built on Aguirre et al.’s (2019) integration of mathematical modeling and social justice issues in mathematics teacher education to similarly integrate statistical investigations with social justice issues. 

There is a lack of teacher education materials that develop equity literacy in content courses for preservice secondary mathematics teachers. In response, we created teacher education curriculum materials for introductory statistics that include an integrated focus on developing equity literacy and critical statistical literacy. In this article, we provide an overview of our materials’ design along with a detailed look at one activity regarding racial demographics and tracking in high school STEM courses. We present evidence regarding the positive impact of these materials on the teacher candidates’ competency, value, and likelihood of applying their equity literacy and critical statistical literacy. Implications for mathematics teacher educators working to develop equity literacy together with content knowledge are discussed. 

Research in prospective teachers’ development of mathematical modeling knowledge for teaching is gaining momentum. The Mathematics of Doing, Understanding, Learning, and Educating for Secondary Students [MODULE(S2)]* project developed a curriculum in modeling for teacher education that includes simulations of practice, in which prospective teachers reflect on and plan a discussion around student thinking, their models, and the contextualization of their results. We present an analysis of prospective teachers’ modeling work on the decreasing area of Indigenous reservation land in the U.S., and a simulation of practice which explores different methods for finding the area of land in connection to the injustice deeply rooted in the treatment of Indigenous people. This problem explores a critical social issue and calls for explicit attention to pedagogical knowledge in structuring discussions around the contextualization of the mathematical results.