BREAKOUT SESSION B2

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10:20 AM – 11:20 AM

Hazel McCallion B

Ontario’s Math Proficiency Test (MPT)

1.    From Math Proficiency to Math for Teaching: Reimagining Support for Early Career Teachers

Sofia Ferreyro-Mazieres & Jennifer Holm, Wilfrid Laurier University

In 2024, Ontario’s Math Proficiency Test (MPT) was reinstated as a compulsory requirement for teacher certification, strengthening the need to support teacher candidates who experience challenges with mathematical content knowledge. This session reports on emerging findings from our current research involving Wilfrid Laurier University teacher candidates, analyzing their preparation for the MPT and the types of support they identified as essential during this stage of certification.

While the MPT assesses foundational mathematics skills, the broader challenge extends well beyond test preparation. Teacher candidates may continue to feel underconfident when they have to apply mathematics in authentic classroom contexts. This points to a critical distinction between preparing for the MPT and developing the deeper mathematical knowledge for teaching required in the first years of practice. Supporting early career teachers in mathematics, therefore, demands sustained attention to their subject-matter understanding, their ability to anticipate student thinking, and their capacity to explain concepts clearly and flexibly.

This session invites participants to explore how initial teacher education programs and professional communities can collaborate to strengthen both MPT readiness and long-term mathematical capacity. Drawing on teacher candidate narratives and evidence informed strategies implemented through MPT preparation initiatives, the session highlights various approaches for building mathematical resilience, nurturing confidence, and developing the mathematical knowledge for teaching that early career educators need to thrive.

Participants will leave with ideas for empowering beginning teachers not only to meet certification requirements, but to navigate confidently the mathematical demands of tomorrow's classrooms.

2.    Beyond the Score: Understanding Anxiety, Equity, and Implementation in Ontario’s Math Proficiency Test

Anton Puvirajah, Western University 

The reinstatement of Ontario’s Mathematics Proficiency Test (MPT) as a teacher-licensure requirement has renewed debates about assessment fairness, equity, and the emotional burden placed on preservice teachers. Our study examined how teacher candidates experience the MPT across preparation, test day, and the waiting-for-results period, with particular attention to mathematics anxiety and perceptions of test relevance. Survey data from 80 candidates and interviews with 10 volunteers revealed moderate overall mathematics anxiety, with significantly heightened evaluation-related anxiety. While participants rated procedural aspects like booking, clarity of instructions, test platform, and perceived fairness, positively, experiences of content relevance, confidence, and emotional impact were sharply polarized. Candidates with higher mathematics anxiety consistently reported stronger pretest anxiety, lower in-test confidence, and weaker perceived alignment between test content and classroom practice. Qualitative findings further illustrated how unlimited rewrites, rapid score release, and school-based supports mitigated catastrophic risk but did not eliminate anxiety spikes linked to technology issues in remote sittings, limited seating availability, and circulating peer narratives about test difficulty. Participants valued the policy-oriented pedagogy section conceptually but critiqued its emphasis on clause-heavy recall rather than applied judgment tasks used in real school contexts.

The study highlights opportunities to reduce affective burden while strengthening policy coherence, including grade-banded mathematics content, more situational judgment items, section-specific retakes, and more informative score reports. By centering candidate experiences, our research offers a nuanced understanding of how high-stakes testing policies are lived in practice and how Ontario might balance accountability with teacher well-being in implementing the MPT .