Mathematics teacher education for secondary schools: Bridging between university courses and field work

This chapter describes the program for prospective secondary school mathematics teachers held at Tel Aviv University. At the university, prospective teachers already have a bachelor's degree in mathematics or a mathematically rich field of study. The main aim of the program is to promote their mathematical knowledge needed for teaching. Prospective teachers attend courses at the university and comply with field work requirements at local schools. The challenge is to bridge coursework with fieldwork, bringing the courses into the field as well as bringing the field into the university. This chapter focuses on the use of cases as tools in fostering this bridging. The chapter begins by describing the rationale and general outline of the teacher education program. It then describes two specific courses, and in particular, how cases were used in those courses. For each course, we offer some findings on what prospective teachers gained from the analysis of cases, as well as their perspectives on the use of cases as learning tool.