Between natural language and mathematical symbols (<, >, =): the comprehension of pre-service and preschool teachers’ perspective of “Numbers” and “Quantity”

Dina Hassidov (1) , Bat-Sheva Ilany (2)

1 Talpiot College of Education
2 hemdat hadarom

This paper deals with a study that relates to the understanding of the concepts that constitute part of symbolic thinking. The goal of the study was to understand how pre-service teachers (PST) and preschool teachers (PT) understand and use the mathematical symbols <, >, and = when comparing numbers, figures and shapes of different sizes and thicknesses. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we examined a study population of 71 PST attending a course for teaching mathematics to pre-schoolers and 149 PT. Our results show that the majority of participants did not answer the questions correctly, with a significant difference between how the two groups validated their answers, indicating that the participants do not correctly understand that mathematical symbols should only be used in the mathematical context.

Mots clés: Preschool teachers; pre-service teachers; mathematics education; early childhood; mathematical symbol

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]; Education

Dina Hassidov, Bat-Sheva Ilany. Between natural language and mathematical symbols (<, >, =): the comprehension of pre-service and preschool teachers’ perspective of “Numbers” and “Quantity”. Eleventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, Utrecht University, Feb 2019, Utrecht, Netherlands. ⟨hal-02422541⟩