This study examines preservice teachers’ knowledge in the case of linear
functions. Teachers’ knowledge in general consists of their subject matter knowledge
and their pedagogical content knowledge. In this study, teachers’ subject matter
knowledge is examined by looking at their ability to adapt to different representation
modes. The framework for subject matter content knowledge consists of five
components: (1) flexibility across formal mathematical symbolisms; (2) flexibility
between visual and algebraic representations; (3) flexibility within visual
representations; (4) flexibility with real-life situations, and (5) procedural skills. In terms
of pedagogical content knowledge, two aspects were examined across five
corresponding components. These two aspects were knowledge of students’ conceptions
and misconceptions, and teachers’ teaching strategies.
The primary source of data for the study was from two tests and six interviews.
The results showed preservice teachers performed poorly in terms of representation
flexibility. Furthermore, most of the preservice teachers had limited knowledge of the
nature and sources of students’ mistakes as well as effective teaching strategies to help
students with their misconceptions. In terms of knowledge structure, representation flexibility was found to be significant in both CK and PCK compared to procedural
skills. Moreover, the representational flexibility in terms of CK seemed to strongly
predict the overall PCK performance. Representational flexibility seemed to be related to
the use of instructional representations. Overall, there was a strong relationship between
various components of CK and PCK.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1663 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | You, Zhixia |
| Contributors | Kulm, Gerald O., Li, Yeping |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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