Prospective Teachers’ Reasoning about Integers and Temperature

Ninety-eight elementary and middle school prospective teachers participated in a study focusing on integer addition and subtraction while enrolled in an introductory mathematics content course emphasizing number concepts and operations. Across two academic semesters, the prospective teachers posed 784 stories for integer addition and subtraction number sentences. Of these, 108 of the stories included the context of temperature. The stories about temperature were analyzed for mathematical correctness, consistency, realism, and problem types. A framework for different problem types for integers was modified. Other complexities for posing these types of stories, such as realism of the temperature stories, will be discussed.