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Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

In the fall of 2005, I started teaching the mathematics content course Algebra and Geometry for Teachers. The majority of students in the course are pre-service middle school teachers. Instead of teaching the course by demonstrating rigorous proofs, I wanted to use teaching strategies that would build the students’ content knowledge and connect to their roles as future mathematics

teachers. I chose to make problem solving a focal process standard by having students problem- solve for a majority of classroom time. In addition, the students complete a major project entitled

“Provide, Attempt, and Assess Problem Solving” or PAAPS. For PAAPS, each student provides a non-routine algebra, geometry, or analytic geometry problem to five of their classmates. Each student then attempts the five problems received, and returns the attempted problems to be assessed by the student who provided them. In this article, I share the results of using PAAPS as evidenced by student surveys and student work (problems chosen, problems worked, and problems assessed). Included in the surveys are the mathematical and pedagogical ideas that the students reportedly learned.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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