Abstract / Synopsis
This paper examines 203 pre-service teachers' reactions and learning when they were introduced to a real-life situation in which it is natural to publish officially both graphs and tables of a given function: the situation of operating a railway. I found that almost all the pre-service teachers managed the easiest tasks, like calculating speeds, distances, and time for train represented by graphs. However, the more complicated tasks, which required interpretations of the graphs and tables, such as planning for a delayed train, finding which trains were locals, freight trains etc., were more difficult for them to grasp. There were few instances where the pre-service teachers had been exposed to real-life situations in their previous education, and while many of them welcomed such a realistic situation, others found the extra details the real-life situation required confusing. Nevertheless, the previous lack of exposure to realistic situations in their educations may highlight the need for more realistic examples in school and teacher education.
DOI
10.5642/jhummath.ZOBM8277
Recommended Citation
Olav G. Imenes, "Graphical Timetables as a Real-life Example of Different Representations of Functions," Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Volume 15 Issue 2 (July 2025), pages 69-97. DOI: 10.5642/jhummath.ZOBM8277. Available at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/vol15/iss2/5
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