Preservice Teachers’ Understandings of the Relation Between a Fraction or Integer and Its Decimal Expansion: Strength and Stability of Belief

Autor: Ed Dubinsky, Ilana Arnon, Kirk Weller
Rok vydání: 2011
Předmět:
Zdroj: Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. 11:129-159
ISSN: 1942-4051
1492-6156
DOI: 10.1080/14926156.2011.570612
Popis: In an earlier study of preservice elementary and middle school teachers’ beliefs about repeating decimals, Weller, Arnon, and Dubinsky (2009) reported on a comparison of the mathematical performance of 77 preservice teachers who completed an APOS-based instructional unit with 127 preservice teachers who completed traditional instruction. The purpose of the current study, based on 47 interviews conducted 4 months after the instruction, during which time there was no further instruction on this topic, is to determine the strength and stability (over time) of the students’ beliefs, to uncover thinking that did not arise in the earlier study, and to see whether the interviews yield similar comparative results. The interviews did uncover changes in student thinking. The students who received the APOS-based instruction developed stronger and more stable (over time) beliefs that a repeating decimal is a number; a repeating decimal has a fraction or integer to which it corresponds; a repeating decimal in...
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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