Prospective teachers' difficulties in integrating technology into problem solving and teaching on rational numbers

Abstract

Background: The use of technology in mathematics teaching is fundamental because it enables students to activate basic mathematical processes. This makes it necessary to carry out studies to identify the prospective teachers' knowledge, so technology can be integrated into their teaching. Models such as TPACK have been developed precisely to analyse the results of this type of study. Objectives: Describe the prospective teachers' challenges to integrating technology into their explanations. Design: The study carried out is exploratory, with a descriptive purpose. Settings and participants: The research was carried out with a sample of 47 pairs of prospective teachers from the University of Zaragoza. Data collection and analysis: We used a data collection tool consisting of a task that involves solving a problem of products of fractions and designing the corresponding explanation for some hypothetical students of the early years, with and without technology. These data are analysed under the TPACK framework. Results: We identified and analysed the difficulties that our prospective teachers present in the face of some relationships between technology and content, and others of a pedagogical-mathematical nature, to relate different interpretations of the rational number adequately, and their tendency not to include technological tools to design their explanations. Conclusions: Our analysis allows us to propose actions to improve our teachers' education to include technology in their classes.