Math requirements for admission in elementary school teacher education programs: does it matter?

Abstract

In Portugal, the initial training of teachers for the first three levels of education (children from 3 to 12 years old) is carried out through a single 3-years undergraduate degree, called Basic Education. This training is completed with a professional master's degree where future teachers choose which levels they will teach. Most master's degrees cover two levels of education: pre-school and 1st cycle or 1st and 2nd cycles. This means that most teachers become qualified to teach the 1st cycle, usually known as elementary school. First cycle teachers teach all educational areas, including mathematics. It is, therefore, essential that they finish their degree in Basic Education with a solid background in Mathematics. Until the academic year 2017-18 there was no mandatory entry requirement in Mathematics to the Basic Education Degree and many students were admitted without having had any Mathematics in secondary education. To ensure a better pre-university training in Mathematics, the Portuguese government imposed an admission exam, as from the academic year 2018-19. This work aims to assess the impact of the government measure on the training of future teachers in the area of mathematics, through the analysis of the performance of students in the 1st year of the Basic Education Degree, from a Portuguese university, in a mathematics course of the 1st semester, over the academic years 2017-18 to 2019-20. The statistical study carried out reveals that there were significant improvements in the results of the students. An analysis of the gender tendency in the choice of the teaching profession was also done and showed that there is a disproportion between men and women in pre-service teachers, since most young people who want to become teachers are female. This study contributes to a better understanding of the impact certain measures and policies can have on the quality of Higher Education academic training. This type of approach can be applied to other similar situations, for other programs and other courses, helping, in this way, decision making in Higher Education admission policies, as well as researchers in this field.