Mathematical competence of the chemistry teacher and its structure

This article is dedicated to analyzing the structure of mathematical competence of chemistry teachers. The mathematical competence of chemistry teachers is considered as a component of their professional competence. The research methodology is based on similar works devoted to the mathematical competence of teachers in other natural science subjects. The paper argues that mathematical competence of chemistry teachers can be regarded as a subsystem of the subject-methodological competence of teachers. An expert analysis of the correspondence between the nature of mathematical activities of teachers and their professional functions has been conducted. It has been argued that the structure of the mathematical competence of chemistry teachers has been determined by the activity components of subject-methodological competence, and the main directions of such activity has been identified. For each direction, an importance index has been assigned and defined as the probability of referring to the respective direction in the teacher's actual work. For the mathematical competence of chemistry teachers, a structural model has been constructed, which has become a modification of the respective models for the mathematical competence of geography, biology, and physics teachers developed by the authors. The index of the level of mathematical competence has been determined as the weighted average of scores obtained for the directions, where the weighting coefficients have been the importance indices. Thus, the level index has been scaled to the probability of randomly solving a selected problem from the problem population, which has been determined by the teacher's activity. Based on the developed model, measurement indices of the mathematical competence of chemistry teachers have been tested through experimental research of the measurement methodology and indices of mathematical competence level. The assessment of the average level of mathematical competence of chemistry teachers has been established as 0.61, with a median of 0.66. Some fundamental problematic issues in mathematics for chemistry teachers have been identified. The analysis of graphs of functional dependencies, systems of equations, and problems involving integer numbers have been among them. The results that have been obtained in the study demonstrate the necessity of adjusting mathematics programs in pedagogical and classical universities, as well as introducing mathematical training modules into professional development courses for chemistry teachers in the system of postgraduate pedagogical education to enhance the necessary mathematical skills. The conducted research has corroborated the authors' conclusion from other studies in the natural sciences field: a middle level of mathematical competence is essential for chemistry teachers to effectively fulfill their subject-methodological competency functions. The study has been demonstrated the necessity of raising the level of mathematical competence among teachers for the effective fulfillment of the job functions of chemistry teachers. Possible further investigations in this area are also related to the implementation of modified professional development courses for chemistry teachers, which include a mathematical component and an analysis of their effectiveness for the practical work of teachers