PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Preservice elementary teachers’ understandings of greatest common factor versus least common multiple
Page: 779
Little is known about preservice elementary teachers’ understandings of greatest common factor (GCF) or how they relate to their understandings of least common multiple (LCM). As part of a larger case study in which an emergent perspective (Cobb & Yackel, 1996) was used to investigate preservice elementary teachers’ understandings of topics in number theory, task- based interviews elicited participants’ conceptions about modeling GCF and LCM using manipulatives, pictures, and story problems and the procedures for finding GCF and LCM using prime factorizations. Additional classroom data served to support findings. Participants held stronger understandings of modeling LCM than they did with modeling GCF. In contrast, participants’ understandings of the procedure for finding GCF were far more robust than their understandings of how to find LCM.