Diagnostics of mathematics pre-service teachers’ skills to form mathematical literacy in secondary students

Mathematical literacy, being significant in any modern person’s successful adaptation to the surrounding environment, should be formed in the process of teaching mathematics at school. The PISA-2018 (Programme for International Student Assessment) study showed that Russian schoolchildren aged 15 years did not fully possess mathematical literacy. One of the obvious reasons is that math teachers lack the appropriate knowledge and skills that are required to form mathematical literacy in secondary students. The purpose of our study is to identify the difficulties faced by mathematics pre-service teachers in the activities to form mathematical literacy in schoolchildren. Having the analysis of a teacher’s activities in training schoolchildren to solve practice-oriented tasks, we have described an approach to the diagnosis of the skills of forming mathematical literacy in schoolchildren. The paper gives an example of formative assessment of mathematics pre-service teachers’ skills of forming mathematical literacy. Our research of 56 mathematics pre-service teachers revealed that they did not have sufficiently formed skills to carry out analysis of the word problem, to organize with schoolchildren the stages of problem solving, to compose preparatory exercises and tasks that develop mathematical literacy, and they also have poorly developed skills related to solving practice-oriented tasks.