PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2013
Denver, Colorado
Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Understanding of Greatest Common Factor Story Problems
Page: 2-219
Little is known about preservice elementary teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching number theory concepts, especially greatest common factor. As part of a larger case study investigating preservice elementary teachers’ understanding of topics in number theory, both content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986), a theoretical model for how preservice elementary teachers understand GCF story problems was developed. An emergent perspective (Cobb & Yackel, 1996) was used to collect and analyze data in the form of field notes, student coursework, and responses to task-based one-on-one interviews. The model resulted from six participants’ responses to three sets of interview tasks where participants discussed concrete, visual, and story problem representations of GCF. In addition to discussing the model and relevant empirical evidence, I suggest language with which to discuss GCF representations.