Elementary mathematics teacher education programs in Greece, Romania, and Spain

Abstract

As a contribution to the discussion of how to improve the initial teacher training in mathematics of elementary teachers, this work presents a descriptive and comparative study of the courses devoted to mathematics and mathematics education in the education degrees of Greek, Romanian, and Spanish universities. Considering the constrains of each national law and within the Mathematics Teacher’s Specialized Knowledge model framework, we analyze the official descriptions of such courses to organize them by their content, to describe their distribution along each degree, and to study the optional and specialization courses in mathematics offered by each university. Data are compared among countries, and across programs within each country, with the aim of including similar studies from other states. Moreover, they are confronted with the National Council on Teacher Quality standards for the mathematics preparation of elementary teachers, showing that, in general lines, GRS data seem not to be in tune with such standards.