A further education student teacher’s mathematical and pedagogical knowledge seen in the teaching of circumference and area of the circle

Students get confused about the concepts of area and circumference of circles as teaching emphasizes memorizing formulas rather than understanding concepts. In this paper, I report findings of the analysis of an episode of a lesson on ‘Area and circumference of the circle’ taught online by a student teacher to a Further Education class. The analysis employed the Knowledge Quartet – a framework for the analysis of mathematics teaching, with a focus on teacher knowledge. Findings show the student teacher’s Foundation is strong in some areas and less strong in other areas. Transformation and Connection were observed to be not strong but some good examples of recognition of conceptual appropriateness were observed. No sign of contingency was observed as students either did not contribute or their contributions were directed to the teacher only making it difficult to observe whether any teacher action was a result of the students’ contributions.