TY - JOUR AU - Powell, Arthur AU - Alqahtani, Muteb AU - Temur, Özlem AU - Tirnovan, Daniela PY - 2022/12/08 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Elementary school teachers’ understanding of unit fractions JF - Boletim GEPEM JA - GEPEM VL - IS - 80 SE - Artigos DO - 10.4322/gepem.2022.051 UR - https://periodicos.ufrrj.br/index.php/gepem/article/view/614 SP - 231 - 248 AB - <div><p class="PMENA"><em>Teachers’ mathematical knowledge is critical for their teaching of mathematics. We investigated whether elementary teachers believe that a unit fraction, </em><em>, results only from a whole equipartitioned into 1/n</em><em>&nbsp;parts. We </em><em>adapted Ciosek and Samborska’s </em><em>(2016)</em><em> Frame Task, presenting a frame consisting of three unequal segmented squared rings, with one squared ring shaded. In semi-structured interviews, 19 teachers engaged the task and reasoned whether the shaded portion equals 1/3 of the frame. Our findings indicate that about three-quarters of the participants believe that either (1) to have one-third of a quantity, a section needs to be one of three parts, or (2) a section cannot be 1/3 of an object if the object is partitioned into three unequal sections. Finally, we hypothesize how an iterative perspective of unit fractions may mitigate against the false beliefs that </em><em>Ciosek and Samborska (2016)</em><em> and our study document.</em></p></div> ER -