Pre-service teachers’ conceptual understanding of the arithmetic mean

Abstract

This study explored pre-service teachers‟ (PST) performance and conceptual understanding of the arithmetic mean after going through the Ghanaian Junior and Senior High School's core and elective mathematics curriculum. It also sought to determine their level of conceptual understanding of the arithmetic mean with respect to the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy. The explanatory sequential mixed method was employed. The purposive, stratified and the simple random sampling techniques were employed to select 370 PST sampled from the Departments of Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics Education of the University of Education, Winneba. Statistical Understanding Test of Arithmetic Mean (SUTAM) was used as data collection tool. The data was analysed descriptively by using percentages and inferentially by the t-test and ANOVA. Results revealed that PST‟ performance on the SUTAM was low. There was no significance difference between the mean scores of the Trained teachers and the direct applicant. Findings also revealed PST have conceptualized the arithmetic mean as an average, as a computational act and as a non-zero measure. Also, the findings indicated that majority (55.1%) of the participants were at the multi-structural level of the SOLO Taxonomy with few (14.6%) at the Relational level. It was recommended that teachers teach the concept of the arithmetic mean with its properties to students before teaching the computation of the arithmetic mean.