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    Facilitating the development of prospective primary school teachers’ understanding of the concept of ratio through discussion


    Costello, Eddie, Stafford, Patsy and Oldham, Elizabeth (2018) Facilitating the development of prospective primary school teachers’ understanding of the concept of ratio through discussion. 42nd ATEE Annual Conference 2017 Conference proceedings. pp. 247-264. ISSN 2593-6409

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    Abstract

    Research on prospective primary school teachers’ (PPSTs’) understanding of the concept of ratio and its application to everyday life has shown that this can be problematic for many student teachers. As the concept is important in the development of proportional reasoning, which underpins many areas of primary school mathematics, questions arise about the PPSTs’ ability to facilitate its development for the children they teach. The “ATEE Ratio Project,” started in 2011, has contributed to the research, chiefly using an instrument designed to elicit from individual respondents the meanings that they ascribed to ratio, the uses (both their own and other people’s) of ratio that they identified, and the ways in which they represented the concept in particular by symbols and drawings – all measures of understanding. For the present study, the research instrument was utilised differently: as a stimulus to discussion (in “Think, Pair, Share” mode), with the aim of investigating if participants’ understanding could be enhanced by this exercise. The work was undertaken in a Mathematics Education module with Professional Masters in Education students in one institution in Ireland, and focused in particular on usage in everyday life. This paper reports on the study, presenting and discussing the findings with reference to the previous Irish and international work. Initial findings suggest that embedding the concept in everyday life contexts helps facilitate PPSTs’ understanding and application of ratio, and should therefore help in supporting the development of their own students’ understanding of the concept.
    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: The 42nd ATEE Annual Conference 2017 was held from 23 to 25 October 2017 in Dubrovnik, Croatia
    Keywords: Ratio; applications; primary teacher education; relational understanding; “Think, Pair, Share”; discussion;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Social Sciences > Froebel Department of Primary and Early Childhood Education
    Item ID: 11816
    Depositing User: Eddie Costello
    Date Deposited: 26 Nov 2019 15:44
    Journal or Publication Title: 42nd ATEE Annual Conference 2017 Conference proceedings
    Publisher: Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE), Brussels, Belgium
    Refereed: Yes
    Related URLs:
    URI: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/11816
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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