Investigating Prospective Primary Teachers’ Conceptual Understanding for Multiplication and Division in Fractions

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate prospective primary teachers’ conceptual understanding for multiplication and division in fractions. In this study, third year prospective teachers’ –who were taking Mathematics Teaching Methods I course- answers to the given multiplication and division problems in fractions were examined in order to understand their levels of conceptual understanding for operations in fractions. 142 prospective teachers were participated in this qualitative study at the end of the 2015-2016 fall semester. Their answers to 2 operations related to multiplication and division in fractions were examined. Prospective teachers’ conceptual understanding of operations in fractions was tried to be understood. In order to support and strengthen the findings, a written-interview protocol with open-ended questions was also applied to the voluntary participants. In data analysis, content analysis technique was employed. The findings suggested that the prospective teachers had difficulty with determining the referent units and made mistakes because of their lack of conceptual understanding of operations in fractions, the majority of them could not model the operations correctly, and they mostly preferred rectangular area model.