Lorenzo J. Blanco

A STUDY OF PROSPECTIVE PRIMARY TEACHERS' CONCEPTIONS OF TEACHING AND LEARNING SCHOOL GEOMETRY

There are two basic guiding referents in the present investigation: the teaching and learning of school-level geometry (basic concepts of Euclidian geometry and measure) and the analysis of the conceptions of prospective primary teachers in Spain. The work assumes that such conceptions appear and develop during school years, and that consequently, for the prospective teachers to learn to teach mathematics, account must be taken of the requirements that arise from these conceptions themselves and from the prospective teachers’ knowledge of school-level mathematics. The objective of the study was to describe and analyse prospective primary teachers’ conceptions of school-level geometry and it teaching and learning. To this end, we considered the hypothesis that the students’ memories and expectations provide information with which to characterize their conceptions of the field of geometry and its teaching/learning at the primary school level.

Learning to Teach Sciences. Problem Solving as a Context for Learning

Several developments during the last decades have provoked spectacular changes in both Science Teaching and Education of Science Teachers. From this perspective of renovation, we wish to define a new context in Science Teacher Education in which we consider that Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Shulman, 1993; Blanco, Mellado & Ruiz, 1995) has to be the knowledge base for the education of future teachers. In the present work, using problem solving as reference, we explain our curricular proposal in teacher education which help to create learning environments referred to “Problem Solving as a context for learning Science”.

Análisis de las Concepciones de los Estudiantes para Profesores sobre las Matemáticas y su Enseñanza-Aprendizaje

The paper presented here is part of a research study carried out with trainee-teacher students who specialized in mathematics and physics at the Faculty of Educational Science at the University of Piura in Peru. The aim of the study is to identify their conceptions of mathematics and its teaching and learning (ZAPATA; BLANCO, 2007; ZAPATA, 2009)1. This paper presents the conceptions of students of mathematics and physics in the Faculty of Education at the University of Piura (Peru), as well as a comparative study on such conceptions using the questionnaire by Camacho, Hernandez and Socas (1995) on population groups in Spain and Peru. It is concluded that are that there are no important differences in their conceptions in spite of the different training programs in both countries, which means that it is necessary to investigate more in the search for programs based on elements that enable future teachers to have a conception of mathematics based on rediscovering knowledge using problem solving as the backbone of the teaching. It has been assumed here that the teacher trainers and tutors in the mathematics teacher training programmes must take the trainee-teachers knowledge and conceptions into account to orientate them, as future teachers, in school activities and in teacher training sessions.