Strengthening pre-service mathematics teachers’ knowledge of students’ thought processes, students’ misconceptions and text analysis skill

Abstract

Mathematics teachers may not be able to fix students’ errors and misconceptions unless they are trained on how to identify, recognize, respond and effectively remediate students’ thought processes and students’ misconceptions. This study determines the effects of solve-reflect-pose strategy (SRPS) on prospective mathematics teachers, students thought processes ability, students’ conceptions and misconceptions ability and their text analysis skill level (TASL). The pre- and post-test research model was used. There were two groups, which were named experimental group (consisted of 92 participants taught with the SRPS) and control group (consisted of 90 participants taught using the modified conventional method (MCM). The quantitative data was collected through an instrument subdivided into three, namely: knowledge of students’ thought processes test, knowledge of students’ conceptions and misconceptions test, and TASL test; and interview protocol was used to collect qualitative data. The formulated research questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics while independent sample t-test was used to analyze the hypotheses. Results showed that the effects of SRPS instruction were statistically significantly different in the mean post-test achievement scores on knowledge of students’ thought process test, students’ misconceptions test and analysis skill level test.