Prospective teachers' comprehension of students' naive conception in mathematical problem solving : the case of linear function

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate how prospective teachers comprehend student's naive conception. For this purpose, firstly, we focus on theorem-in-action in conceptual fields theory (Vergnaud, 1990) and elaborate the notion in order to evaluate students' naive conception in detail. Secondly, we report the case study on liner function. Two types of data were collected: a questionnaire investigation for prospective teacher, and an interview on what they thought of students' naive conception. These results show that if prospective teachers identify both the factual and valuable aspects of students' naive conception, they might place them in teaching mathematics positively.