Retention in Public Tertiary Education: a view of prospective Mathematics teachers’ from two universities

Abstract

Retention of students in the Brazilian public universities is one of the main challenges for Tertiary Education in the country. This research aims to map out factors that, in the perception of prospective Mathematics teachers, are important for their retention in the undergraduate programs. For that purpose, a qualitative study was carried out with first-year students of mathematics teachers’ undergraduate programs at two federal universities in Rio de Janeiro. Software Iramuteq and content analysis technique were used for data analysis. Three main categories emerged from this analysis: welcoming; learning; teaching strategies. Our results suggest that the student regard the academic activities promoted by the university as well as the lecturers’ classroom practices as playing a crucial role for their retention in the programs.

Keywords

• retention of students in tertiary education
• mathematics teachers’ education
• pre-service mathematics teachers’ education