This paper focuses on the prospective kindergarten and elementary school teachers' understanding of the ratio concept. Eighty-one undergraduates preparing to become kindergarten and primary school teachers, in a Portuguese university, participated in the study. They answered to a questionnaire aiming at evaluating their understanding of the ratio concept based on four dimensions:meaning of ratio; use of the ratio concept; symbolic representations of ratio; and representations for explaining the ratio concept. As far as results are concerned, the highest frequencies were obtained for: the idea of ratio as a comparison/relationship between two magnitudes;the belief that this concept is used in several contexts; the belief that it can be represented through operations with letters, figures or operation signals, as in symbolic representations; and through diagrams and graphical representations, as in representations for explaining the ratio concept. The results show weaknesses in prospective teachers' mathematical knowledge of ratio, namely with regard to its definition and representations.
Conceptions of Ratio; Representations of Ratio; Prospective Kindergarten and Elementary School Teachers
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