TITLE:
Perspective of “Quantity” between Natural Language and Mathematical Symbols (, =): The Comprehension of Pre-Service and Preschool Teachers
AUTHORS:
Bat-Sheva Ilany, Dina Hassidov
KEYWORDS:
Preschool Teachers, Pre-Service Teachers, Mathematics Education, Early Childhood, Mathematical Symbol
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.9 No.10,
August
7,
2018
ABSTRACT: The goal of the study was to understand how pre-service and preschool teachers understand and use the mathematical symbols , and = when comparing figures and shapes of different sizes and thicknesses. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we examined a study population of 71 pre-service teachers attending a course for teaching mathematics to pre-schoolers and 149 preschool teachers. Our results show that the majority of participants did not answer the questions correctly, with a significant difference between how the two groups validated their answers, indicating that the participants do not correctly understand that mathematical symbols should (, and = ) only be used in the mathematical context.