Concept Images of Infinity in Drawings of Pre-Service Teachers
Liora Nutov and Ariella Levenberg

Proceedings of Bridges 2020: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Education, Culture
Pages 489–492
Short Papers

Abstract

We conducted a descriptive and non-experimental study that aimed to uncover the concept images of infinity as expressed in original drawings of 47 pre-service math teachers (PSTs) for primary school. The drawings were part of an assignment in an online asynchronous course that integrated art in the math curriculum. The findings indicated that about half of PSTs associated infinity with everyday life phenomena. Less than third of them offered a concept image of infinity in a numeric domain and most of these drawings visualized potential infinity. In addition, the study uncovered that almost quarter of PSTs have misconceptions of the concept. We propose that drawing mathematical concepts as has been done in this study, may offer an additional tool to explore PSTs perceptions of abstract concepts in math teacher training.

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