MATHEMATICS: TRADITIONS AND [NEW] PRACTICES • © AAMT & MERGA 2011 IMPROVING SELF-CONFIDENCE AND ABILITIES: A PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING APPROACH FOR BEGINNING MATHEMATICS TEACHERS MARTIN SCHMUDE University of New England martin.schmude@une.edu.au PENELOPE SEROW University of New England pserow2@une.edu.au STEPHEN TOBIAS University of New England stobias@une.edu.au This paper draws from a pilot study about a teacher education program that focused on building preservice primary teachers’ confidence and abilities in teaching and learning mathematics. The cohort involved on-campus [n=82] and off-campus [n=420] participants. The qualitative study was based on developing three aspects of mathematics teacher education: (1) Content knowledge; (2) Pedagogical knowledge; and (3) Knowledge of the learner. A problem-based learning environment was created to build students’ self-efficacy and to encourage the beginning teachers’ willingness to engage in the unit content by providing authentic teaching contexts, and to develop a richer conceptual and procedural understanding of mathematics. Introduction For many preservice primary teachers, learning to teach mathematics can be a challenging and, at times, a fearful undertaking. Many researchers (Black, 2007; Jorgensen, Grootenboer, & Sullivan, 2010) have discussed the nature of preservice mathematics education, and in particular, how a social constructivist approach can enhance a productive disposition and willingness to engage in learning mathematics. Student-centred learning offers a pedagogical approach for mathematics education in the 21st century where the educational paradigm shifts from traditional, teacher and textbook-centred approaches, to situations where the learner is personally challenged and engaged in a social construction of knowledge. This paper describes an ongoing project that seeks to investigate a productive learning environment for first-year preservice primary teachers taking an initial mathematics education unit of study. During the first stage of the project, the focus was on the plausibility of a problem-based learning (PBL) approach for enhancing productive dispositions with preservice teachers to teaching and learning mathematics. Background Many preservice primary teachers have demonstrated negative feelings and attitudes to learning mathematics (Cady & Rearden, 2007). In addition to poor attitudes, mathematics educators are often faced with teaching students with low mathematical content knowledge and a history of mathematical experiences that are predominantly 676