Impact of access requirements on the mathematical knowledge of students admitted to Primary Teaching programs: a micro-comparative study

Overview & Synopsis

We present a comparative micro-study analyzing whether the changes made to the admission requirements to the primary teacher training programs of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of Helsinki in the academic year 2017-18 have had an impact on the background mathematical knowledge of those admitted to the programs. We are interested in finding elements that provide information for university admission policies. Our results show that significant changes only took place in Barcelona and these were a consequence of the variations in the academic profile of the students admitted. We conclude that working with a context-bound instrument, while making comparison difficult, directs the researchers’ attention to the need for an in-depth theoretical discussion about the mathematical knowledge of candidates to initial teacher education programs and a methodological discussion on how to evaluate this knowledge.