Mathematicians' views on the subject-specific education of prospective teachers

Teachers need to understand the underlying ideas of the mathematical contents they teach in school. Thus, prospective upper secondary school teachers are often required to take several academic mathematics courses during their studies at university. These courses are often designed by mathematicians. However, it is so far unclear to what extent these mathematicians consider school-related content knowledge (SRCK) as a relevant part of teachers’ subject-specific knowledge. The results of our online survey with 424 German mathematics lecturers indicate that they consider SRCK as a relevant part of teachers’ knowledge. Furthermore, they mostly believe that academic mathematical content knowledge is insufficient to acquire SRCK, and that SRCK needs specific learning opportunities.