PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
From friend to foe to friend again: Eliciting personification of pre-service teachers’ beliefs of mathematics
Page: 1023
This paper reports about using eliciting personification (Zazkis, 2015) as a means to study pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) beliefs. The method has the PSTs’ create a character named Math and describe their relationship with the character. The authors analyzed 68 personifications from college sophomore PSTs’ in an elementary math content course. At the end of the semester, the PSTs; revisited the assignment by describing a new character based on the math learned in class and writing a dialogue to themselves. At the beginning of the semester, the PSTs described math as having multiple personalities, out to hurt them, and having a relationship that fell apart throughout the years. The math described at the end was more compassionate, welcoming, and easier to understand.