Published In
Proceedings of the 38th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Pyschology of Mathematics Education
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2016
Subjects
Mathematics -- Study and teaching (Elementary), Effective teaching, Mathematical ability, Mathematics teachers--Training of
Abstract
Prospective teachers (PTs) need opportunities to develop fraction number sense, yet little research has explicated how this development occurs. Our research team collaboratively designed a task targeted at helping PTs develop fraction number sense through an exploration of fraction comparison strategies. This paper focuses on developing one particular strategy, which we call Greater Number of Larger Pieces (GLP). We argue that understanding this strategy has the potential to support PTs’ number sense, particularly in regards to the measure interpretation of fractions. Analysis of data from two iterations of this task (implemented by five mathematics teacher educators at five US institutions with 124 PTs) showed an improvement in the task’s ability to naturally elicit the GLP strategy from PTs. We share our task, results from each iteration, and discuss modifications that we believe led to increased usage of the GLP strategy.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/29994
Citation Details
Olanoff, D., Feldman, Z., Welder, R., Tobias, J., Thanheiser, E., & Hillen, A. (2016). Greater number of larger pieces: A strategy to promote prospective teachers’ fraction number sense development. In M. B. Wood, E. E. Turner, M. Civil, & J. A. Eli (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (pp. 799-807).
Description
Presented at The University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ.