1 Pre-Service Teachers Engaging in Mathematical Investigation

Abstract: Personal experience with secondary school mathematics teachers and students in Singapore suggests that they do not know how and what to investigate when given an open investigative task. This agrees with what many literature writers claimed but most of their writings were based on anecdotal evidence. There seems to be a lack of research studies to support the assertion that many teachers and students do not know how to deal with open mathematical investigation. This paper presents the first part of a big research study on the processes of mathematical investigation. It investigates whether pre-service mathematics teachers know what to do with an open investigative task. The study reveals that all of these pre-service teachers had no previous experience in open mathematical investigation when they were students themselves, and that most of them do not know how and what to investigate when given an open investigative task. Since the pre-service mathematics teacher training curriculum in Singapore does not explicitly teach the pre-service teachers how to deal with this type of open investigation, it is unlikely that they will teach their students to do so