Cameron Hauseman, an associate professor of educational administration at the University of Manitoba, said the registry fails to provide essential information for public accountability.

“If anything, it adds further questions surrounding those processes,” Hauseman said Monday.

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Research shows that effective mathematics teaching in K-12 classrooms requires a deep understanding of what is sometimes called “mathematics knowledge for teaching,” or MKT. At the heart of MKT is the fact that teachers need to understand mathematics in ways that are very different from how physicists, chemists, engineers or mathematicians engage with mathematics.

Teachers need to understand mathematics concepts such as fractions, proportional reasoning, spatial sense and algebra in ways that will enable them to support all children to learn these concepts. Unlike engineers and physicists, mathematics teachers need to be familiar with a number of ways of explaining and representing these mathematics concepts and of engaging in mathematical thinking.

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The University of Manitoba says it isn’t concerned this will result in a watering down of the ability to teach math as all their students have to take at least one math course to get their degree.

“Our program specifically focuses on teaching pedagogy for math education,” said Dr. Jan Stewart, dean of education at the University of Manitoba.

“So all the students in our program are required to take six credit hours of teaching math education.”

Stewart says the old rules were driving some people away from teaching in the early and middle years or even leading them to take jobs out of province.

The Manitoba Teachers Society also approves of the changes.

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