Open Access Peer-reviewed Research Article

From a teacher education course to upper elementary classrooms and back: Revealing innate abilities of children to do teachers' mathematics

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Submitted   Dec 1, 2023
Published   Feb 5, 2024
Issue    Vol 4 No 1 (2023)
DOI   10.25082/AERE.2023.01.004

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Sergei Abramovich corresponding author
School of Education and Professional Studies, State University of New York, Potsdam, NY 13676, USA
Laura L. Griffin
School of Education and Professional Studies, State University of New York, Potsdam, NY 13676, USA

Abstract

One of the key ideas of the modern-day elementary mathematics teacher education deals with mediating learning by visual thinking to enable transition from seeing and acting on concrete objects to describing the visual and the physical through culturally accepted symbolic representations. This paper shares mathematical activities designed originally for teacher candidates and used with students in upper elementary classrooms at a school in Upstate New York with minority student enrollment 97%. Because successful use of conceptual thinking by young students does have positive impact on their future teachers, connection of work in the school to a master’s level elementary mathematics education course taught by the authors is discussed. It is shown how using a spreadsheet and Wolfram Alpha allows for the research-like extension of the activities to the secondary level of mathematics education.

Keywords
elementary mathematics, conceptual thinking, problem solving, hands-on activities, digital technology, teacher education

Article Details

How to Cite
Abramovich, S., & Griffin, L. L. (2024). From a teacher education course to upper elementary classrooms and back: Revealing innate abilities of children to do teachers’ mathematics. Advances in Educational Research and Evaluation, 4(1), 239-249. https://doi.org/10.25082/AERE.2023.01.004
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