Prospective teachers' responses to students' dialogue on fractions: attribute substitution and heuristic approaches. Issue 1 (2nd January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bergman, Anna Marie; Gallagher, Keith; Zazkis, Rina
• Is Part Of: Research in mathematics education. Volume 25:Issue 1(2023)
• Page Start: 85
• Page End: 104
• Publication Date: 2023-01-02
• Subjects: Fractions -- attribute substitution -- scriptwriting; Mathematics -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 510.71
• DOI: 10.1080/14794802.2021.2020155
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1479-4802

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Knowing how best to respond to students' mathematical inquiries is an important skill for all teachers to develop. A class of pre-service teachers (PSTs) was presented with a scripting task in which a student conjectured that 1/6.5 was "exactly in between" fractions 1/6 and 1/7. However, instead of addressing the student's inquiry directly, many of the PST's responses contained a variety of explanations for more general information about fractions and their various representations. We offer a classification of the responses using the ideas of attribute substitution along with the availability and representativeness heuristics.