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This study aimed to explore preservice elementary teachers' use of a bar model as a heuristic for conceptualising relationships between quantities in situations involving ratio and percentages. As a part of a larger project, we focused on two preservice teachers, Maia and Jane, and investigated their solution paths in ratio and percentage problems and the role of the structural representations (i.e., bar model and percent line-bar model) in their solution paths. We analysed these focus participants' written solutions and their think-aloud process during interviews using three coding phases with a constructivist grounded theory approach. We observed that the problem text fed the construction of the structural representations that served to make sense of the quantities and the relationships among them. Furthermore, the structural representations enhanced Maia and Jane's mathematical insights about the problem situations. In addition, we observed that preservice teachers' solution paths were neither linear nor similar, which indicates a mathematical richness in learning. In those solution paths, the model construction played a role in guiding the mathematical operations of constructing and operating on a unit rate in the ratio problem and identifying and operating on a referent whole unit in the percentage problem. We interpreted that variety and nonlinearity in solution paths suggested mathematical richness in learning, the educational implications of which were further discussed.

Providing students with opportunities to build, and test and revise ideas, can help them develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In this article, the authors describe how core measurement and geometry concepts were embedded within a "Model It!" task. They replicate an industry-based, interdisciplinary problem, but only focus on the mathematical ideas here. Twenty-six Algebra 1 students worked on organizing gingerbread houses within a community and designing the path and operation of a mini-trolley tour. Starting work on these tasks required that students keep the task specifications in mind. With guidance from their teacher, the students sub-divided their modeling work into creating three designs: (1) trolley path design, (2) gingerbread community design, and (3) a two-dimensional (2D) model of the gingerbread community to fit the resort ballroom.