The Praxis Content Knowledge test in Mathematics is designed to assess the mathematical knowledge and competencies necessary for a beginning teacher of secondary school mathematics. Examinees have typically completed a bachelor’s program with an emphasis in mathematics or mathematics education. The examinee will be required to understand and work with mathematical concepts, to reason mathematically, to make conjectures, to see patterns, to justify statements using informal logical arguments, and to construct simple proofs. Additionally, the examinee will be expected to solve problems by integrating knowledge from different areas of mathematics, to use various representations of concepts, to solve problems that have several solution paths, and to develop mathematical models and use them to solve real-world problems.

The test is not designed to be aligned with any particular school mathematics curriculum, but it is intended to be consistent with the recommendations of national studies on mathematics education, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000) and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) Program Standards for Initial Preparation of Mathematics Teachers (2003).