Prospective Middle School Mathematics Teachers’ Covariational Reasoning for Interpreting Dynamic Events During Peer Interactions

Abstract

This study investigated the covariational reasoning abilities of prospective middle school mathematics teachers in a task about dynamic functional events involving two simultaneously changing quantities in an individual process and also in a peer interaction process. The focus was the ways in which prospective teachers’ covariational reasoning abilities re-emerge in the peer interaction process in excess of their covariational reasoning. The data sources were taken from the individual written responses of prospective teachers, transcripts of individual comments, and transcripts of conversations in pairs. The data were analyzed for prospective teachers in terms of the cognitive and interactive aspects of individual behavior and also interaction. The findings revealed that prospective teachers at different levels working in pairs benefited from the process in terms of developing an awareness of their own individual and also a pair’s understanding of covarying quantities. Furthermore, the prospective teachers had opportunities to develop their knowledge on the connection between variables, rate of change, and slope. The prospective teachers’ work in pairs provided salient explanations for their reasoning about the task superior to their individual responses.