Primary and Secondary Teachers’ Knowledge, Interpretation, and Approaches to Students Errors about Ratio and Proportion Topics

Elena Fabiola Ruiz Ledesma

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DOI: 10.4236/ce.2011.23035                

Abstract

This study investigated elementary and secondary teachers’ understanding and pedagogical strategies applied to students making errors in finding a missing length in similar rectangles. It was revealed that secondary teachers had better understanding of ratio and proportion in similar rectangles than elementary teachers. While all secondary teachers solved the similar rectangles problems correctly, a large portion of elementary teacher struggled with the problem. In explaining their solution strategies, and even though similar strategies appeared both from elementary teachers and secondary teachers, a majority of secondary teachers pointed out the underlying idea of similarity, whereas less than half of the elementary teachers explained their reasoning for using ratios and proportion. This article is derived from the research project registered under number 20110343 (Ruiz, 2011), and developed in Escuela Superior de Cómputo del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) (School of Computer Sciences of the National Poly-technical Institute of Mexico)

Keywords

Primary Teachers, Secondary Teachers, Knowledge, Ratio, Proportion’ Problems

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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