A methodology to investigate pre-service teachers' content-related instructional decisions and teaching actions

Teacher educators need to better understand how pre-service teachers make decisions that lead them to enact particular content knowledge in their lessons. Lesson observations can be used to examine the content knowledge manifesting in teaching actions and stimulated recall interviews can offer insights into teaching decisions. However, methodological approaches are needed that use strategic combinations of data collection and analysis techniques to illuminate connections between teaching actions and decisions. This paper describes one such methodological approach that investigates (i) pre-service teachers' content knowledge that manifests in their live teaching actions and (ii) the decisions that lie behind those actions including the influences on those decisions. The approach is illustrated using data from a study of secondary mathematics pre-service teachers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the analytical approach described and the potential for findings produced using this approach to inform the design of teacher education experiences.