Two Prospective Middle School Teachers Reinvent Combinatorial Formulas: Permutations and Arrangements = Dos futuros maestros de escuela intermedia reinventan fórmulas combinatorias: permutaciones y arreglos

We report on findings from two one-on-one teaching experiments with prospective middle school teachers (PTs). The focus of each teaching experiment was on identifying and explicating the mental processes and types of intermediate, supporting reasoning that each PT used in their development of combinatorial reasoning. The teaching experiments were designed and facilitated to guide each PT toward reinventing multiple combinatorial formulas. Drawing on a subset of this data, we describe the development of the PTs' mental processes and reasoning as they came to construct formulas for counting permutations and arrangements without repetition, and we analyze our findings through a psychological constructivist framework. [For the complete proceedings, see ED629884.]