Supporting Preservice Secondary Teachers' Mathematical Meanings for Advanced Algebraic Identities

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Research on Preservice Mathematics Teacher Learning During Teacher Preparation

Abstract

A year-long teaching experiment was conducted with four pre-service secondary teachers to investigate how they established advanced algebraic identities. These identities can support an understanding of a range of topics in Algebra II and Pre-Calculus courses. The task design for the study was based on prior studies conducted with secondary students (8th-12th graders) where researchers used a combinatorial and quantitative approach to help students develop advanced algebraic identities. The findings from this study illustrate the power and coherence of the mathematical meanings that the PSSTs developed because they could see a common structure among a class of problems. Previously, they had experienced these problems as involving the same computational process, but not sharing a common structure

Authors

• Erik S. Tillema, Indiana University

• Lori Burch, Indiana University - Bloomington