PME-NA

Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Reasoning about the Relationship between Shapes without Established Prototypes

• In Event: Shape and Space

Description

Because prototype interference is one theory as to why learners struggle with classifying shapes, we were interested in investigating how preservice elementary teachers (PSETs) would do reasoning about the relationship between pairs of shapes when no established prototypes exist. Thus, in this exploratory study, 46 PSETs were given six pairs of nonstandard hexagons. For each pair, PSETs completed two statements to describe the relationship between the hexagons. Results showed that the PSETs got both statements correct less than one-fourth of the time. PSETs were about four times more successful when the pairs of hexagons had a partitional relationship rather than a hierarchical relationship. PSETs did slightly better with dynamic diagrams in a Dynamic Geometry Environment versus static diagrams printed on paper.

Authors

• Wayne Nirode, Miami University

• Brian Boyd, Wright State University