Mathematics and Partnerships: Examining the Effectiveness of Teaching Mathematics Education Through a University-School Partnership

The study reported in this paper is a partnership story between an Australian university and a local elementary school. The partnership was embedded in a first-year undergraduate teacher education course and was explicitly focused on mathematics education in the teacher education program. The partnership involved relocating the mathematics teacher education unit to the school and working closely with classroom teachers to teach the unit content to Pre-service Teachers. The focus of the study was on determining the effectiveness of the partnership model for enhancing the mathematical pedagogical content knowledge of first-year Pre-service Teachers. The findings presented in this paper suggest that a university-school partnership model affords a variety of avenues for strengthening mathematics education in initial teacher education programs.