PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2020
Boston, Massachusetts
Future teachers’ use of multiplication and division to formulate linear equations
Page: 268
We report results from administering a paper-and-pencil survey to 56 future middle grades and secondary grades mathematics teachers enrolled in teacher preparation programs at two large public universities in the Southeast. We intentionally designed one task on the survey so that it could be used with the variable-parts perspective on proportional relationships. The task asked teachers to show relationships among quantities described in the text by drawing a picture of the situation, writing an equation, and writing a few sentences to explain their equation. Analysis of the responses led to three results: (a) most future teachers represented relationships between parts and wholes appropriately, either by comparing parts to parts or by combining parts to make wholes, (b) future teachers were successful using division as often as multiplication when writing linear equations that combined two different units, and (c) when future teachers made errors using multiplication, reversal errors were the most common.