PROCEEDINGS OF THE 15TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2012
Portland, Oregon
Providing Answers to a Question That Was Not Asked
Page: 2-32
The purpose of this article is to contribute to research on teachers’ conceptions of probability. To meet this objective, prospective mathematics teachers were presented two different answer keys to a 10 question multiple-choice quiz and were asked to determine and justify which of the two answer keys was least likely to occur. This article utilizes the attribute substitution model (Kahneman & Frederick, 2002) to account for certain normatively incorrect responses from prospective teachers. This new perspective provides evidence that certain individuals, when presented a particular question, answer a different question instead. Results demonstrate that participants substitute a variety of heuristic attributes instead of making the intended relative likelihood comparison of the answer keys presented. Through recognizing that there is more than one particular candidate for the role of heuristic attribute, results further demonstrate that certain participants substitute more than one heuristic attribute in their response justifications.