Eric.ed.gov – (Mis)Conceptions about Geometric Shapes in Pre-Service Primary Teachers

During the last reform, Slovakia has reduced geometry in curriculum in primary mathematics education. Pre-school education schools devote more time to geometry in curriculum, but this is not mandatory for all the children. In the primary schools, teachers devote very little lessons time to this problem. These lessons are mainly focused on technology of drawing rather than on creating the right conceptions, which results in below the average scores on international test results in Slovak students. One possible solutions is to improve the level of geometrical knowledge of primary education teachers and pre-service primary education teachers. This paper is focused on the knowledge of plane geometric figures and their properties. We found out that pre-service teachers in primary education have many misconceptions that started when these students were learning the subject matter during their lower level education. In order to be able to more effectively design the curriculum, didactics and methods for future math teachers, we decided to test pre-service primary education teachers in planar shapes during their first year of university. Some results are presented in the article.