Why do prospective teachers have difficulties in mathematical modelling? Insights from their perspectives

Abstract

This study investigated the sources of difficulties experienced by prospective teachers in mathematical modelling in the context of a semester-long course on mathematical modelling for teachers. The data reported in this study were collected from six prospective teachers through in-depth semi-structured interviews supported by audio and videotaped classroom observations and prospective teachers’ written solutions for the modelling tasks. The results showed that the sources of difficulties experienced by prospective teachers in mathematical modelling could be subsumed under individual and contextual factors. The individual factors included four issues: lack of conceptual understanding of mathematics, the difficulty of connecting the real world and the mathematical world, the disposition to focus solely on reaching a result, and disorganized and unsystematic work. The contextual factors included two issues: insufficient previous experience with modelling tasks and time limitations. Some implications of these results are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Difficulties with mathematical modelling
• mathematical modelling
• modelling process
• prospective teachers
• pre-service mathematics teacher education

Acknowledgments

The research reported here is based on the first author’s PhD Dissertation completed at the Middle East Technical University under the supervision of the second and third authors. The data was collected as part of a larger research. The same group of participants was analysed with a different focus using the same modelling tasks [see Sen-Zeytun et al. (2017)].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK - Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu) [grant no 110K250]. Ayhan Kursat ERBAS was supported by the Turkish Academy of Sciences through the Young Scientist Award Program (Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi ) [grant no A.K.E./TÜBA GEBİ P/2012-11].