| The development of proportional reasoning ability is important in mathematics education. This study focuses on preservice teachers in a problem-solving-based mathematics course that includes the study of proportional reasoning. Of particular interest was the preservice teachers' entry-level understanding of proportional reasoning and their proficiency with it at the end of the course. In addition to looking at ability to solve proportion problems, correlation of this ability was investigated with respect to age, gender, mathematics background, learning style, year in school, and certain aspects of the affective domain of the preservice teachers.;A time-study design was used to collect data over the course of one semester, with one additional data collection event at the beginning of the following semester. There were 187 participants in eight sections of the mathematics course, taught by six different instructors. Six of these preservice teachers, one from each instructor's class, also took part in pull-out problem-centered interviews. Of the 187 participants during the fall semester of the study, 108 took the final problem survey at the beginning of the spring semester.;The results show that there was statistically significant gain in proportional reasoning over the course of the semester, and that gain was maintained over the winter semester break. In addition, there was significant gain in attitudes toward mathematics, technology, and small group work. There was significant correlation between mathematics background and proportion problem performance, between learning style and proportion problem performance, and between attitude toward mathematics and proportion problem performance. From the problem-centered interviews with individual students, it appears that students revert to additive (rather than multiplicative) strategies when confronted with proportion problems of a type they have not seen before. |
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