Semiotic meanings in mathematical modeling: an analysis of videos produced by prospective teachers

Abstract

Mathematics teacher education remains a major challenge within the mathematical modeling community. More exploration of practices, contexts, resources, problems, and tasks is also needed. This study examined how creating mathematical modeling videos can support semiotic meanings by prospective mathematics teachers (PMT). The study took place in a course in which 15 pre-service teachers worked in groups to create digital videos. Data were gathered during the video production, including interviews, participant observation, and PMT's videos. In this paper, we used Humans-with-Media and Social Semiotic theoretical approaches to analyze the processes behind two digital videos. Deductive analysis in descriptive and relational levels showed that digital videos do more than just inform; because of their multimodal features, they help produce meaning about the usefulness of mathematics and emphasize its role in solving problems relevant to students’ own experiences. The results also indicate that, for future teachers, replication is an important strategy, serving as a link between mathematical applications and initial approaches to modeling .