PRIMARY TEACHERS ’ CONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF VOLUME: THE CASE OF VOLUME–MEASURABLE OBJECTS

In this paper part of the results obtained by a research project called “Primary teachers’ thinking about the concept of volume and its teaching”, performed from 1997 to 2001, are reported. This paper focuses in one of the two main objectives of the aforementioned research: To describe the mental object volume of the participant teachers. The experience took place in a five-session workshop directed to in–service teachers and mathematics advisors of the Public Educational Bureau (Secretaría de Educación Pública). The sessions were audio and video taped and a set of questionnaires was posed in the first session. The transcriptions of these recordings, as well as the answers obtained by the questionnaires, were analyzed in order to attain the planned objectives. The literature related to teachers ’ thinking and mathematics education is extensive since the 1990’s decade. Researchers that also have under their charge the education of future teachers have developed a great part of these studies. Between the results obtained some indicate that teachers ’ conceptions, as well as their experiences when they were school–aged children, influence their professional practice (see Civil, 1996; Thompson, 1992)