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Montclair State University

Quantitative reasoning

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Investigating Elementary School Students’ Reasoning About Dynamic Angles, Erell Germia Aug 2022

Investigating Elementary School Students’ Reasoning About Dynamic Angles, Erell Germia

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Angle measurement is a significant topic in almost all areas of mathematics learning and also in many disciplines outside mathematics education, such as engineering and architecture. According to the literature, there are three common conceptions of angles – as union of rays, rotations, and wedges. Researchers argued that students must consider these three angle concepts together to construct a meaningful understanding of angles. However, the curriculum standards for mathematics often present these angle conceptions separately to students, probably resulting in a fragmented understanding of the angle concept. In addition to this problem, the research literature documents multiple alternative conceptions that …


Conventions, Habits, And U.S. Teachers’ Meanings For Graphs, Kevin C. Moore, Jason Silverman, Teo Paoletti, Dave Liss, Stacy Musgrave Mar 2019

Conventions, Habits, And U.S. Teachers’ Meanings For Graphs, Kevin C. Moore, Jason Silverman, Teo Paoletti, Dave Liss, Stacy Musgrave

Department of Mathematics Facuty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this paper, we use relevant literature and data to motivate a more detailed look into relationships between what we perceive to be conventions common to United States (U.S.) school mathematics and individuals’ meanings for graphs and related topics. Specifically, we draw on data from pre-service (PST) and in-service (IST) teachers to characterize such relationships. We use PSTs’ responses during clinical interviews to illustrate three themes: (a) some PSTs’ responses implied practices we perceive to be conventions of U.S. school mathematics were instead inherent aspects of PSTs’ meanings; (b) some PSTs’ responses implied they understood certain practices in U.S. school …


Pre-Service Teachers’ Figurative And Operative Graphing Actions, Kevin C. Moore, Irma E. Stevens, Teo Paoletti, Natalie L.F. Hobson, Biyao Liang Jan 2019

Pre-Service Teachers’ Figurative And Operative Graphing Actions, Kevin C. Moore, Irma E. Stevens, Teo Paoletti, Natalie L.F. Hobson, Biyao Liang

Department of Mathematics Facuty Scholarship and Creative Works

We report on semi-structured clinical interviews to describe U.S. pre-service secondary mathematics teachers’ graphing meanings. Our primary goal is to draw on Piagetian notions of figurative and operative thought to identify marked differences in the students’ meanings. Namely, we illustrate students’ meanings dominated by fragments of sensorimotor experience and compare those with students’ meanings dominated by the coordination of mental actions in the form of covarying quantities. Our findings suggest students’ meanings that foreground operative aspects of thought are more generative with respect to graphing. Our findings also indicate that students can encounter perturbations due to potential incompatibilities between figurative …