TY - JOUR
T1 - Mathematics teachers' reasoning about fractions and decimals using drawn representations
AU - Lee, Soo Jin
AU - Brown, Rachael Eriksen
AU - Orrill, Chandra Hawley
N1 - Funding Information:
The work reported here is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DRL-0633975. The results reported here are the opinions of the authors and may not reflect those of NSF. The authors wish to thank the Does it Work team for their support and particularly Danie Brink, Andrew Izsák, and Susan Sexton for help in conducting the interviews analyzed for this report. The authors also wish to thank three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful—and thought-provoking—comments. Earlier versions of this report were presented at the Research Presession of the 87th Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, and the International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2008.
PY - 2011/7
Y1 - 2011/7
N2 - This qualitative study considers middle grades mathematics teachers' reasoning about drawn representations of fractions and decimals. We analyzed teachers' strategies based on their response to multiple-choice tasks that required analysis of drawn representations. We found that teachers' flexibility with referent units played a significant role in understanding drawn representations with fractions and decimals. Teachers who could correctly identify or flexibly use the referent unit could better adapt their mathematical knowledge of fractions validating their choice, whereas teachers who did not attend to the referent unit demonstrated four problem-solving strategies for making sense of the tasks. These four approaches all proved to be limited in their generalizability, leading teachers to make incorrect assumptions about and choices on the tasks.
AB - This qualitative study considers middle grades mathematics teachers' reasoning about drawn representations of fractions and decimals. We analyzed teachers' strategies based on their response to multiple-choice tasks that required analysis of drawn representations. We found that teachers' flexibility with referent units played a significant role in understanding drawn representations with fractions and decimals. Teachers who could correctly identify or flexibly use the referent unit could better adapt their mathematical knowledge of fractions validating their choice, whereas teachers who did not attend to the referent unit demonstrated four problem-solving strategies for making sense of the tasks. These four approaches all proved to be limited in their generalizability, leading teachers to make incorrect assumptions about and choices on the tasks.
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U2 - 10.1080/10986065.2011.564993
DO - 10.1080/10986065.2011.564993
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79960622391
SN - 1098-6065
VL - 13
SP - 198
EP - 220
JO - Mathematical Thinking and Learning
JF - Mathematical Thinking and Learning
IS - 3
ER -