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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
This article reports a research in the context of a K-6 prospective teacher education experiment
developed in a geometry course in the 2nd year of their preparation program. This course included
the study of the classification of quadrilaterals and prisms. The research is guided by the
following question: how does the learning of hierarchical classification of geometric figures
evolve from a teacher education experiment that includes the classification of quadrilaterals and
prisms and follows an exploratory approach to teaching? Data was collected from audio and
video records from the lessons and from the participants’ written reports about the classification
of quadrilaterals and prisms. The results show that, in the first stage that focused on quadrilaterals,
the participants’ difficulties in classifying derived mainly from their inexperience with
the process of classifying geometrical objects and from their strong conceptualization of some
quadrilaterals, very attached to prototypical images. In the second stage, the classification of
prisms showed a positive and significant evolution, with a lower influence of prototypical images
and a higher understanding about the classification process and the identification of hierarchical
relationships among “close” and “distant” figures. However, the final evaluation test showed that
the prospective teachers still had misunderstandings, most often related to the interpretation of
the discourse and logical reasoning than to limited figural concepts.
Description
Keywords
Classification Quadrilaterals Prisms Geometric reasoning Prospective teacher education