PROCEEDINGS OF THE 19TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2016
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Exploring pre-service teachers’ mental models of “doing math”
Page: 456
This study explored the mental models pre-service teachers hold of doing math. Mental models are cognitive structures people use while reasoning about the world. The mental models related to mathematics would influence a teacher’s pedagogical decisions and thus influence the mental model of mathematics that their students would construct. In this study, pre-service elementary teachers drew images of mathematicians doing math. Using comparative judgements, they selected an image that best represented a mathematician doing math. The drawings and participants’ responses to prompts were analyzed for common themes. The pre-service teachers generally believed that mathematicians do math through teaching and mathematicians really enjoy doing math. The appearances of the mathematicians generally adhered to stereotypes found in the literature.