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Challenges in deepening prospective teachers’ understanding of multiplication through justification

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Abstract

This article reports challenges faced by prospective elementary teachers as they revisited whole number multiplication through a sequence of tasks that required them to develop and justify reasoning strategies for multiplication. Classroom episodes and student work are used both to illustrate these challenges, as well as to demonstrate growth over time. Implications for the design of mathematics courses for prospective teachers’ are discussed. Although the study is situated in the context of multiplication, it has implications for teachers reasoning and justification in other areas of mathematics.

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Notes

  1. Many tasks were adapted from Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (TERC, 1998) curriculum and Lampert and Ball (1988).

  2. In coding student work we were conservative, taking students’ words at face value.

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Correspondence to Jane-Jane Lo.

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Lo, JJ., Grant, T.J. & Flowers, J. Challenges in deepening prospective teachers’ understanding of multiplication through justification. J Math Teacher Educ 11, 5–22 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-007-9056-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-007-9056-6

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