Pre-service teachers’ mathematical models' features

Abstract

This study came to characterize the features of mathematical models built by mathematics pre-service teachers for a model eliciting activity. Fourteen groups participated in building the models. We used a combination of deductive and inductive content analysis to characterize the pre-service teachers' elicited models, taking into account features mentioned in the literature: content factors, representation form, operations, generalization, reality, accuracy, precision, robustness and fruitfulness. Moreover, two features were introduced by us, namely the interactivity and the finalization features. The findings of the research indicate that models utilized mainly the list and text representations. Moreover, most of the participantsʹ models had substantial accuracy and substantial preciseness. At the same time, most of the models had partial or no generalization, partial or no reality, partial or no interactivity and partial or no finalization. Furthermore, most of the models were without robustness and without fruitfulness.