Prospective teachers’ design of numeracy tasks using a physical distancing context

Abstract

Physical distancing, which is widely practiced limiting the spread of COVID-19, is recognized to contain mathematical thoughts that can be harnessed as a context for prospective teachers’ practices of mathematical problem posing. The goal of this study is to investigate the profile of mathematical tasks posed by prospective mathematics teachers using the context of physical distancing that meets the criteria of numeracy tasks. Data were collected from 66 mathematical tasks posed by thirty-three prospective teachers at a public university in Surabaya, Indonesia, attending an assessment course of numeracy based on a problem-posing task. To analyze, the posed tasks were first identified as solvable or unsolvable tasks and then further categorized into the domains of the level of context use and the level of cognitive processes. Results show that the level of context use embedded in the posed tasks varies from zero to first order, with only a few of the posed tasks being coded as having second-order context. Regarding the levels of cognitive processes, most of the posed tasks reach the level of understanding, with only a small number of reasoning tasks identified. Interestingly, all the tasks coded to contain second-order context are classified as reasoning tasks. Some implications regarding designing numeracy tasks using physical distancing and interventions in teacher education related to numeracy task design are discussed.