Abstract
The paper is a reflection on the author’s work with students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate elementary mathematics content and methods courses. Two specific pedagogical issues make up the focus of the paper. The first issue deals with demonstrating to future teachers the diversity of mathematical ideas behind a contextual question asked by a second-grade pupil allowing for multiple solution strategies to be used in addressing the question. The second issue deals with the use of Wolfram Alpha in aiding different mathematical features of this demonstration. The paper is congruous with mathematics teaching standards used across six continents and illustrated by reflective comments of the author’s students regarding their mathematics teacher education experiences. Teaching ideas shared in the paper may be of interest to instructors who want to explore elementary mathematics in depth with teacher candidates.
Highlights
The goal of this paper is to reflect on the use of Wolfram Alpha—a computational knowledge engine developed by Wolfram Research—with teacher candidates enrolled in elementary mathematics education courses taught by the author
The candidates were introduced to the use of Wolfram Alpha as a program capable of both numeric and symbolic computations
Three major debated nowadays in mathematics education concern mathematical knowledgeviews for teaching
Summary
The goal of this paper is to reflect on the use of Wolfram Alpha—a computational knowledge engine developed by Wolfram Research—with teacher candidates enrolled in elementary mathematics education courses taught by the author. Perhaps the need to coordinate a rather sophisticated real-life context (average temperature increase within a five day range) mapped onto a problem with more than one correct answer and the use of the commutative property of addition were the main reasons why second graders had difficulty with what was expected from kindergarten students; that is, to come up with relations (1). This posed an interesting didactical problem for the author—how can one make an additive decomposition of an integer a natural outgrowth of a tactile activity?. (p. 115), they applied their findings to describe possible two day temperature they applied their findings to describe possible two day temperature changes in the form in the form of relations (1).of relations (1)
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