Representations used by mathematics student teachers in mathematical modeling process

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine representations used by mathematics student teachers in steps of mathematical modeling process based on their solutions of problems formed in the context of different classification of modeling. The study was conducted with fifteen secondary mathematics student teachers given a Mathematical Modeling course. The participants were separated into five collaboration groups of three students. Data were collected with the detailed written papers given by the groups for the problems and GeoGebra solution files. The groups benefited from verbal, algebraic, figural, tabular and dynamic representations while they were solving the problems. Considering all steps of the process, groups at most used verbal and algebraic representations. While they used only verbal representation in analyzing the problem, they benefited from at most verbal representation and then figural representation in establishing the systematic structure. The most used is algebraic and then verbal representations in the steps of mathematization, meta-mathematization, and mathematical analysis. In the steps of interpretation/evaluation and the model verification, the groups mainly benefited from verbal and then algebraic representations. Further researches towards why representations are preferred in the specific steps of the mathematical modeling process are suggested.