Anticipating Primary School Students’ Answers of Hierarchical Classifications Tasks: Features of Preservice Primary Teachers’ Curricular Reasoning

Resumo

Background: Anticipating answers to tasks involves reasoning with knowledge of scientific domains that support the practice of teaching mathematics. Objective: The aim of this study is to characterise how preservice teachers anticipate answers to tasks as a skill linked to the competence of planning a mathematics lesson. Data collection and analysis: We analysed the definitions of geometric figures and shapes given by twenty-eight pre-service teachers in hierarchical classifications tasks. Results: Results show three profiles of preservice teachers' curricular reasoning considering the specialization of the definitions and the transitivity of inclusion relations and some variability between the domains of quadrilaterals and prisms. Conclusions: The results suggest the importance of the relationship between geometry knowledge and pre-service teachers’ curricular reasoning.