Which is the Best Strategy for a Fermi Problem? Adaptability of Pre-Service Teachers
Abstract
Fermi problems, suitable for primary school, pose a real and open situation that allows the development and comparison of multiple strategies. This requires teachers to be adaptive (able to choose the most appropriate strategy). The aim of this paper is to characterise and analyse the adaptability of prospective teachers when solving these problems. For this purpose, the research is divided into two studies. Study 1 presents a survey addressed to experts in mathematics education; the analysis of their answers makes it possible to link the contextual characteristics of the problems with strategies, and these with appropriateness criteria (accuracy, speed and rigour). These results lead to a characterisation of adaptability that allows us to approach Study 2 with pre-service teachers, finding that most adaptive solvers use strategies non-systematically.
Keywords
Adaptability, Flexibility, Estimation, Modelling, Fermi problemsReferences
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