期刊名称：Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education
印刷版ISSN：1305-8223
电子版ISSN：1305-8223
出版年度：2020
卷号：16
期号：2
页码：1-17
DOI：10.29333/ejmste/112617
出版社：Pamukkale Univ Dept Sci Education
摘要：This paper reports on an exploration of preservice teachers’ understanding of the
quadratic function concept in Zimbabwe. These concepts were taught to preservice
teachers studying for a diploma in Education wishing to specialize in the teaching of
Ordinary level mathematics. Concerns about high Mathematics failure rate in
Zimbabwean Secondary Schools have prompted this investigation into finding out if
teachers’ understanding of quadratic function concept could be the cause. The study
adopted the APOS (action-process-object-schema) to investigate their conceptual
understanding of the concepts. Data were generated from students’ responses to a
written task and follow up interviews were used to solicit information from the
preservice teachers. A designed genetic decomposition for quadratic concepts was
used as an analysis tool. The findings of the study also revealed majority of the preservice
teachers seemed to be operating at the action level of understanding, with very
few teachers who have reached the object level. It was noted that the preliminary
genetic decomposition failed to accommodate all students’ responses which lead to
the development of a modified genetic decomposition.
关键词：APOS theory; genetic decomposition; quadratic function
