Characteristics of Pre-Service Primary School Teachers’ Configural Reasoning

Abstract

The goal of this study is to identify the characteristics of pre-service primary teachers’ configural reasoning, understood as the relationships between concepts and figures set to solve geometrical proof problems. Ninety-seven primary teachers were asked to solve two geometrical proof problems in which a geometrical figure was provided. The results suggest the existence of two levels of the pre-service primary teachers’ discursive organization. The first, when pre-service primary teachers link the geometrical facts to the figure by discursive apprehensions, and the second, when several geometrical facts are related by logical chains to infer new information. The identification of a relevant configuration and the way in which geometrical facts are logically organized from discursive apprehensions are key factors in the shift between these moments. We contend that these factors help to explain how the image component stimulates thought and how conceptual constraints control the formal rigor of the process.