Abstract
This paper reports on an exploration of preservice teachers’ understanding of the quadratic function concept in Zimbabwe. These concepts were taught to preservice teachers studying for a diploma in Education wishing to specialize in the teaching of Ordinary level mathematics. Concerns about high Mathematics failure rate in Zimbabwean Secondary Schools have prompted this investigation into finding out if teachers’ understanding of quadratic function concept could be the cause. The study adopted the APOS (action-process-object-schema) to investigate their conceptual understanding of the concepts. Data were generated from students’ responses to a written task and follow up interviews were used to solicit information from the preservice teachers. A designed genetic decomposition for quadratic concepts was used as an analysis tool. The findings of the study also revealed majority of the pre-service teachers seemed to be operating at the action level of understanding, with very few teachers who have reached the object level. It was noted that the preliminary genetic decomposition failed to accommodate all students’ responses which lead to the development of a modified genetic decomposition.
Highlights
The study focuses on function concept because of its relevance in a variety of situations
This paper reports on an exploration of preservice teachers’ understanding of the quadratic function concept in Zimbabwe
Most student teachers were at the action level
Summary
The study focuses on function concept because of its relevance in a variety of situations. Functions in general are considered to be some of the most important topics in mathematics (Cooney & Wilson, 1993; Dreyfus & Eisenberg, 1984; Romberg, Carpenter, & Fennema, 1993; Zaslavsky, 1997), cited in Parent 2015. It is generally linked to the development of any nation in the world. In Zimbabwe, both primary and secondary teacher training colleges have ordinary level mathematics as requirement for enrolment to prospective teachers. The focus of tertiary education policy in Zimbabwe is mainly rooted in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S.T.E.M). This study will mainly focus on finding out if the quality of teachers produced from teachers’ colleges could be the cause of this situation
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have