PROCEEDINGS OF THE 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2015
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Examining the pedagogical implications of a secondary teacher’s understanding of angle measure
Page: 985
This paper reports the results of a series of task-based clinical interviews I conducted to examine how a secondary mathematics teacher’s understandings of angle measure afford or constrain his capacity to bring his mathematical knowledge to bear in the context of teaching. The results suggest that the teacher, David, possessed two complementary but conceptually distinct ways of understanding angle measure that he was not consciously aware of having. As a result David was unable to strategically employ his two ways of understanding in novel problem-solving situations and was unable to leverage his understandings in the context of teaching. I also discuss the effectiveness of an instructional intervention designed to support David in becoming aware of his understandings and conclude that engaging teachers in experiences that promote reflected abstraction is one way of supporting them in transforming their mathematical knowledge into a pedagogically efficacious form.