The Association between Teachers' Beliefs, Enacted Practices, and Student Learning in Mathematics

By Drew Polly, J. McGee, Chuang Wang, R. Lambert, D. Pugalee, S. Johnson. The Mathematics Educator, 2015

108 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mathematics educators continue to explore ways to improve student learning. Of particular interest are the relationships between teachers’ instructional practices, their beliefs towards mathematics teaching, and student learning outcomes. While some studies have found empirical links between teachers’ enactment of specific instructional practices and gains in student learning, there is no conclusive connection between beliefs, instructional practices, and gains in student learning outcomes. This study examines a few critical relationships between: teachers’ beliefs and instructional practices, teachers’ beliefs and student learning outcomes, and teachers’ instructional practices and student learning outcomes. Data from 35 teachers and 494 elementary school students indicated significant relationships between teacher beliefs and practices but not between teacher beliefs or instructional practice when related to student achievement in mathematics measured by curriculum-based tests. Implications for the design of professional development and for further research related to mathematics teachers’ beliefs, their instructional practice and their student learning outcomes are also shared.

Subfields: Education, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb4ee9059c0b8435acc26eb99abb57ac30e5adde

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. Tracy M. Sweet
2. Megan Hopkins
3. James P. Spillane
4. Charalambos Y. Charalambous
5. H. Hill
6. K. Jackson
7. Charles Munter
8. Y. Copur-Gencturk

In Statistics and Probability

1. James P. Spillane
2. Tracy M. Sweet
3. Charalambos Y. Charalambous
4. Megan Hopkins
5. H. Hill
6. M. Carlson
7. Meixia Ding

Citations in the corpus

• Working at the intersection of teacher knowledge, teacher beliefs, and teaching practice: a multiple-case study (2015, background): “Along the same lines and also using a case study approach, Skott (2001) documents how a novice middle-grade mathematics teacher responded to different students in markedly different ways, partly because of his beliefs.”
• School District Educational Infrastructure and Change at Scale: Teacher Peer Interactions and Their Beliefs About Mathematics Instruction (2017, background): “Moreover, teachers’ beliefs about mathematics have been associated with student learning in that subject (Polly et al., 2013).”