SECONDARY MATHEMATICS PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ CONCEPTION ABOUT AUTHENTICITY OF MATHEMATICAL TASKS

Abstract

The teaching approaches of mathematics derived from humanity involve positive interactions that support meaningful and relevant learning. The main objective of the teaching approaches is to prepare students with the competence to solve daily life problems and one of the most important tools is using authentic tasks. There are different opinions on "task authenticity" in teaching and learning mathematics. This study examined how secondary mathematics preservice teachers think of the authenticity of tasks. Drawing on a framework of tasks authenticity adopted from the research literature, we analyzed PSTs’ response to the criteria of task authenticity. The results show that the PSTs attended to the event feature and the tool feature of task, but overlooked other features. Implications for teacher training are discussed.