PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Preservice secondary teachers’ abilities to use representations and realistic tasks
Page: 771
This study reports three preservice secondary teachers’ abilities and tendencies to use representations in problem solving as well as their abilities to use realistic tasks after taking mathematics content and methods courses that emphasized the roles of representations and realistic tasks. Qualitative analyses showed that the preservice teachers developed beliefs that representations and realistic tasks are important components of secondary education and used motivational tasks in their instruction. However, they used the tasks mainly as the application of learned facts rather than as the departure of students’ construction of mathematical ideas. They also showed tendencies to use algebraic approaches in problem solving for grade 5-12 level tasks and had difficulties connecting algebraic and geometric representations when solving high school level algebra problems.