Teacher Education Students’ Cognitive Developmental Stages

This study concerned with the cognitive developmental stages of 72 Mathematics majors and 72 non-Mathematics majors teacher education students of the Pangasinan State University Bayambang Campus, Philippines who were enrolled during the first semester of the school year 2015- 2016. Specifically, this study purported to determine and compare the cognitive developmental stages between the Mathematics and non-Mathematics majors and among the second year, third year, and fourth year students. It further determines the interaction effect of students’ cognitive developmental level. The 144 samples were drawn from the second, third and fourth year teacher education students. There was equal number of samples drawn by major course and by year level. Results showed that the students majoring in Mathematics and in non- Mathematics courses generally are concrete operational thinkers. However, the Mathematics major differs significantly in their cognitive developmental stage when compared with that of the non-Mathematics majors. The former tend to have higher cognitive developmental level than the latter are middle concrete operational thinkers; teacher education students in all curriculum year level, viz., second year, third year and fourth year are late concrete operational thinkers. Students in these year levels have comparable cognitive developmental stage; and the students’ major course and year level have interaction effect to their cognitive developmental stages. The third year Mathematics majors have the highest cognitive developmental stage while the third year non-Mathematics has the lowest stage.

Keywords: teacher education, cognitive development, mathematics