Primary school teachers' initial training: a study in math domain

Muchos trabajos de investigación ponen en alerta sobre los contenidos matemáticos con los que llegan los alumnos al Grado de Maestro de Primaria. Mediante una evaluación inicial, utilizando una prueba de 3º de ESO, constatamos esa falta de conocimientos matemáticos y competencias y mediante el rendimiento académico comprobamos que no consiguen unos resultados satisfactorios, obteniendo mejores resultados los alumnos que las alumnas, los alumnos de 3º que los de 2º y que Confianza, Motivación, Utilidad y Agrado por este orden, es la actitud que manifiestan los futuros maestros hacia las Matemáticas.Various studies have paid attention to the mathematical knowledge and skills with which students begin their initial training as future primary school teachers. In line with these studies, we gave a group of second and third year students at the “Grado de Maestro de Primaria” a mathematical test which is commonly used at third year of ESO and assessed their academic performance and competencies. The results indicated that (i) the students showed a number of important gaps in their knowledge of mathematics and that their academic performance was far from acceptable; (ii) male and 3rd year students performed better than female and 2nd year students; and (iii) the factors that characterized students’ attitude towards mathematics included confidence, motivation, usefulness and satisfaction, in decreasing order of importance.Grupo FORCE (HUM-386). Departamento de Didáctica y Organización Escolar de la Universidad de Granada