Education Commons^™

An Investigation Of How Preservice Teachers Design Mathematical Tasks, Elizabeth Karen Zwahlen

Theses and Dissertations

The tasks with which students engage in their mathematics courses determine, for a large part, what students learn. Therefore, it is essential that teachers are able to design tasks that are worthwhile for developing mathematical understanding. Since practicing teachers seldom incorporate worthwhile mathematical tasks in their lessons, we would expect that they did not become proficient at designing worthwhile tasks while in their teacher education programs. This thesis describes a study that investigated what preservice secondary teachers attend to as they attempt to design worthwhile mathematical tasks. Three participants were selected from a course at a large private university where …