Epistemic Network Analysis as a Tool for Exploring Teachers' Understanding of Similarity and Proportion

• In Event: 35.083 - Poster Session 7
  In Poster Session: 35.083-8 - Research in Mathematics Education SIG Poster Session

Abstract

This study examines the ways in which middle school teachers understand and explain the relationship between similarity and proportions. We acknowledge that an individual’s coherence of knowledge is their ability to recall and synthesize multiple and highly integrated resources frequently in diverse contexts. Our work is grounded in the knowledge in pieces (KiP; diSessa 1988, 2006) theory which suggests that we accumulate our understandings of the world and store them as a variety of knowledge resources to be used in various combinations based on a given situation. This study relies on epistemic network analysis (ENA; Shaffer et al., 2009) to analyze coherence. We found that teachers use different resources to think about the relationships between similarity and proportions.

Authors

• Timothy Marum, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth

• Chandra H. Orrill, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth

• James P. Burke, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth