The implementation of the new mathematical knowledge base in Dutch teacher education institutes for primary education raises a need for curriculum development. Teacher educators have to raise student teachers’ subject matter knowledge to a higher level. In working on this aim teacher educators experience that student teachers often feel uncertain about their mathematical skills and are not very interested in formal and abstract mathematics. Student teachers prefer to focus on mathematical pedagogical content knowledge. This paper presents two design studies that try to tackle this problem. The first one targets the development of student teachers’ specialized content knowledge (SCK) and the second one focuses on their horizon content knowledge (HCK). Both studies target developing student teachers’ mathematical subject matter knowledge in the perspective of teaching mathematics in primary school. In the studies we established student teachers’ learning environments that kept them involved and motivated, even when they found the mathematics hard to do. Primarily, this attitude supported their mathematical growth, while it also developed their pedagogical skills and insight. INTRODUCTION
Designing non-routine mathematical problems is a challenging task, even for excellently performing prospective teachers in primary teacher education, especially when these non-routine problems concern knowledge at the mathematical horizon (HCK). In an experimental setting these prospective teachers were challenged to design non-routine HCK-problems. Acquiring HCK, the perspective of the problem solver in terms of heuristics, a cyclic design process, experts struggling themselves in designing problems were the most important effective characteristics of the learning environment that rise from this explorative study. In Stylianides, G. J., & Hino, K. (Red.). Research Advances in the Mathematical Education of Pre-service Elementary Teachers: An International Perspective. Springer, New York.
