The role of professional knowledge for teachers’ analysing of classroom situations regarding the use of multiple representations

ABSTRACT

Using multiple representations and changing between them is at the heart of the mathematics classroom; unconnected changes can, however, be obstructive for students’ learning. In order to support students’ learning with multiple representations, teachers have to link observed situation aspects with relevant professional knowledge, a competence we described as teachers’ analysing of classroom situations in prior research. Although teachers’ professional knowledge plays a critical role in such competence, empirical evidence regarding different facets of such knowledge and their interplay is still scarce. This study investigates different facets of teachers’ knowledge of using multiple representations in the context of learning fractions and their role for teachers’ corresponding competence of analysing. We asked N = 298 teachers at different levels of expertise to analyse six classroom situations presented as text, comic or video. Our findings indicate that knowledge facets related to mathematical content are significant predictors for teachers’ competence of analysing.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional knowledge
• analysing
• competence
• multiple representations
• fractions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of the project EKoL and was supported by the Ludwigsburg University of Education and the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts in Baden-Wuerttemberg.