Elementary Preservice Teachers' Responses to Students' Mathematical Mistakes About Place Value: An Explorative Study

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Practice Makes Perfect? Mistakes, Models, and Matters in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Students’ mistakes provide critical clues of students’ thinking; teachers’ responses to the mistakes is important to improve students’ learning. This study examined the mistakes that first graders made in learning place value and the preservice teachers’ responses to those mistakes. Ten preservice teachers’ teaching practices were analyzed. The analysis focused on four aspects of the responses: (1) Detecting students’ thinking underlying mistakes. (2) Building responses on students’ thinking. (3) Leaving room for students’ own discovery of answers. (4) Connecting to mathematical conceptions. The results indicated that students made three kinds of mistakes about place value: (a) Confounding value positions. (b) Failing to regroup. (c) Misusing tools. Regarding preservice teachers’ responses, they were generally unconstructive on the four aspects mentioned above.

Authors

• Guoxiang Wang, Texas Tech University

• Jian Wang, Texas Tech University

• Raymond Flores, Texas Tech University