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: 1425
This preliminary study explores 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 and of themselves doing math. Using comparative judgements, they selected an image that best represented a mathematician doing math. Most images of mathematicians doing math were of a man in front of a blackboard filled with mathematical symbols. The mathematicians appeared happy. In contrast, many images of participants showed them to be unhappy or in confused states. The preliminary results suggest that their shared mental model of doing math is naïve and shaped by limited experiences with mathematics in the classroom.