Prospective Secondary Mathematics Teachers' Understanding and Cognitive Difficulties in Making Connections among Representations

• Published in: Mathematical thinking and learning Vol. 15; no. 3; pp. 201 - 227
• Main Authors: Moon, Kyunghee, Brenner, Mary E., Jacob, Bill, Okamoto, Yukari
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Routledge 01.07.2013; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Algebra; Cognitive ability; Mathematical thinking; Mathematics education; Mathematics teachers; Postsecondary education; Secondary education; Secondary school teachers; Student teachers; Teacher education; Undergraduate students; United States
• ISSN: 1098-6065; 1532-7833
• DOI: 10.1080/10986065.2013.794322

This study investigates prospective secondary teachers' cognitive difficulties and mathematical ideas involved in making connections among representations. We implemented a three-week teaching unit to help prospective secondary mathematics teachers develop understanding of big ideas that are critical to formulating connections among representations, in the context of conic curves. Qualitative analysis of data showed that most undergraduate mathematics majors and minors in this study struggled with variation, the Cartesian Connection, and other affiliated ideas such as graph as a locus of points. Furthermore, they were unable to identify basic metric relations encoded in algebraic expressions such as the distance between points, which further compounded their difficulties in making connections among representations. We argue that mathematics teacher education needs more focus on these ideas so that their graduates can successfully teach these big ideas in their future instruction.