PROCEEDINGS OF THE 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2015
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pre-service teachers’ conceptual understanding of numerals and arithmetic with numerals in base-ten and bases other than ten
Page: 120
This preliminary study explores pre-service teachers’ learning and understanding of arithmetic as they are confronted with numbers represented in different bases in order to add to the body of literature about teacher knowledge. Students in an initial mathematics content course for elementary teachers were interviewed as they solved problems related to representing whole numbers and related to arithmetic operations on numbers represented in various bases. Initial findings suggested that the areas of knowledge development during the course were still domain specific and the links, or concepts, in terms of semantic networks were still weakly connected. Students could hold contradictory views of concepts. Additionally, standard algorithms for operations in other bases were also not consolidated; they were not abstracted to the point that new structures had emerged as conceptualized.