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...

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Main Author:	Ng, Lee Fong
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English English
Published:	2018
Subjects:	QA1-43 General
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
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id	my-ums-ep.42098
record_format	uketd_dc
spelling	my-ums-ep.420982024-12-16T04:04:50Z Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education 2018 Ng, Lee Fong QA1-43 General 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. 2018 Thesis https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42098/ https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42098/1/24%20PAGES.pdf text en public https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42098/2/FULLTEXT.pdf text en validuser doctoral Universiti Malaysia Sabah Fakulti Psikologi dan Pendidikan
institution	Universiti Malaysia Sabah
collection	UMS Institutional Repository
language	English English
topic	QA1-43 General
spellingShingle	QA1-43 General Ng, Lee Fong Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education
description	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.
format	Thesis
qualification_level	Doctorate
author	Ng, Lee Fong
author_facet	Ng, Lee Fong
author_sort	Ng, Lee Fong
title	Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education
title_short	Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education
title_full	Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education
title_fullStr	Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education
title_full_unstemmed	Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education
title_sort	making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in malaysia institutes of teacher education
granting_institution	Universiti Malaysia Sabah
granting_department	Fakulti Psikologi dan Pendidikan
publishDate	2018
url	https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42098/1/24%20PAGES.pdf https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42098/2/FULLTEXT.pdf
_version_	1818611446044426240

Making sense of infinity among mathematics student teachers in Malaysia institutes of teacher education

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