Numeracy of prospective elementary school teachers: A case study

Abstract

Numeracy is the ability to access, use, interpret and communicate information and mathematical ideas related to numbers in a particular context. Therefore numeracy skills are needed for a prospective elementary school teacher. The purpose of this research is to describes prospective elementary school teachers' numeracy. This type of research is a qualitative descriptive study. This study's subjects were prospective elementary school teachers' from Universitas PGRI Adi Buana Surabaya, represented by one individual with low mathematical ability. Data were obtained through numeracy tasks. Prospective elementary school teachers with high ability can identify, find or access some mathematical information relevant to the purpose, involve using known mathematical procedures and rules, and develop opinions about that information. However, there are some errors in communicating according to the content based on its interpretation results. Prospective elementary school teachers with low ability have been able to identify, find or access some mathematical information relevant to the goal. Still, they have not been able to involve procedures and develop opinions about the information. Based on this study's results, arithmetic needs to be a topic of attention to improve mathematics learning achievement in the future.