Cognitive Shifts in Pre-Service Secondary Teachers’ Conceptual and Procedural Coordination about Asymptotic Behavior Luan Nguyen, Oklahoma State University
Abstract: I will share my PME-NA proposal, which presents the results of a qualitative study that investigated the cognitive mechanisms through which pre-service secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs) coordinate their conceptual and procedural knowledge about the asymptotic behavior of rational functions. While literature establishes that PSMTs often favor procedural proficiency over conceptual depth, the internal reorganization of these knowledge forms remains underexplored. Grounded in Piaget’s theory of reflecting and reflected abstraction, we analyzed how participants’ schemes evolved during task-based clinical interviews. Findings reveal that disrupting routine procedures with anomalous function behaviors triggers reflected abstraction, leading participants to integrate structural explanations with procedural execution. These results suggest that teacher education should engender cognitive conflict to foster specialized content knowledge in PSMTs.
Mathematics Seminars and Colloquia