Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education
This thesis attempts to explain mathematics student teachers’ varying concepts of infinity based on the ways of making sense. Two pilot studies, carried out at Institutes of Teacher Education (IPG) located in Sabah and Sarawak, tested possible items that can lead to how mathematics student teachers...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
2018
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42098/1/24%20PAGES.pdf https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42098/2/FULLTEXT.pdf |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | This thesis attempts to explain mathematics student teachers’ varying concepts of infinity based on the ways of making sense. Two pilot studies, carried out at Institutes of Teacher Education (IPG) located in Sabah and Sarawak, tested possible items that can lead to how mathematics student teachers make sense of infinity. The theoretical framework in the research focuses on mathematical thinking, which describes the ways of making sense about infinity based on perception, operation and reason. Although the research focuses on infinity, the theory from the framework is applicable to other topics in the field of mathematics. Using the experience gained through the pilot studies, the main research was carried out at 13 selected IPGs, which involved 238 student teachers majoring in mathematics. There are four of the student teacher took part in the interview sessions. Three types of concepts in infinite divisibility thinking were discussed in this study, namely potential infinity thinking, actual infinity thinking and problematic thinking. Mostly student teachers were making sense about their conceptions of infinity by perception and a few of them are able to think at the higher stage by operation and reasoning. The findings indicate that the sense-making affected student teachers’ thinking about infinity concept. The inferential analysis results show that there is a significant relation between cardinality construct with conception of infinity but has no significant relationships between equalities construct and limit construct with the conception of infinity. The Kruskal Wallis test analysis indicated that there are significant differences among the infinite divisibility thinking types in the conception of infinity. The last idea is about supportive conceptions and problematic conceptions in making sense of mathematics. Supportive conception is noticeable among the minority of the student teachers. That is not the whole story of the research. This research revealed that a supportive conception might contain problematic aspects and a problematic conception might contain supportive aspects. The research found there are problematic conceptions in all constructs of infinity among the mathematics student teachers and their knowledge related to infinity should be explored further. |
|---|