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K-8 Preservice Teachers’ Inductive Reasoning In The Problem-Solving Contexts, Marta Magiera
K-8 Preservice Teachers’ Inductive Reasoning In The Problem-Solving Contexts, Marta Magiera
Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications
This paper reports the results from an exploratory study of K-8 pre-service teachers’ inductive reasoning. The analysis of 130 written solutions to seven tasks and 77 reflective journals completed by 20 pre-service teachers lead to descriptions of inductive reasoning processes, i.e. specializing, conjecturing, generalizing, and justifying, in the problem-solving contexts. The uncovered characterizations of the four inductive reasoning processes were further used to describe pathways of successful generalizations. The results highlight the importance of specializing and justifying in constructing powerful generalizations. Implications for teacher education are discussed.