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Mathematics Teachers’ Use of Knowledge Resources When Identifying Proportional Reasoning Situations

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Abstract

In this qualitative study, we investigated teachers’ use of proportional knowledge resources while being asked to appropriately identify if a given situation was proportional or not using clinical interview data from a large grant funded project. We found that knowledge resources related to the mathematical structure of the situation were most useful in correctly identifying the situation. Interestingly, teachers were often able to identify a mathematical expression for the situations; however, these rules did not support the correct identification of the situation as proportional or not. We discuss suggested knowledge resources for the creation of a coordination class for identifying situations that are proportional from those that are not as well as implications for teacher education and professional development around proportional reasoning.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Gili Nagar, James Burke, Jinsook Park, and John Millett for their help on earlier versions of this analysis.

Funding

The work reported here was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DRL-1054170.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pennsylvania State University Abington, 207 Cloverly, 1600 Woodland Road, Abington, PA, 19001, USA

    Rachael Eriksen Brown

  2. Appalachian State University, 342 Walker Hall, 121 Bodenheimer Dr, Boone, NC, 28608, USA

    Travis Weiland

  3. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, Dartmouth, MA, 02747, USA

    Chandra Hawley Orrill

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  1. Rachael Eriksen Brown
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  2. Travis Weiland
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  3. Chandra Hawley Orrill
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Correspondence to Rachael Eriksen Brown.

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Brown, R.E., Weiland, T. & Orrill, C.H. Mathematics Teachers’ Use of Knowledge Resources When Identifying Proportional Reasoning Situations. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 18, 1085–1104 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-10006-3

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