Primary ITT students’ competence and confidence in mathematics teaching in the UK: A review of literature

Abstract

Recently, teacher recruitment and retention has been the focus of the government and a step taken to support recruitment was the abolishing of the skills tests. Initial teacher training providers became responsible for assessing students’ mathematics rather than having it externally assessed. The purpose of this literature review is to synthesise the findings of recent studies conducted in the UK about the students’ competence in mathematics and confidence in teaching it. Six electronic databases were searched, utilising a systematic approach, which identified only six relevant articles. This is significant as it demonstrates that, despite the evidence about the urgent need for intervention, there is limited research that explore how to address the issue of improving prospective primary school teachers’ mathematics competence and confidence, especially in England. This systematic review contributes to the field by bringing attention to the important findings of these studies. Findings suggest that while some primary students’ competence and confidence about teaching mathematics is low, holding advanced level mathematics qualifications does not guarantee knowledge required to teach primary mathematics effectively. Some trainees have positive attitudes towards mathematics and, more importantly when this is not the case, both trainees’ attitude towards learning and teaching mathematics can be improved.