The next category reports what future
teachers witnessed during the servicelearning
activity (questions 4 and 5 from the
short survey in Appendix C). This category
has three subcategories: students’ misconception
of fractions; interactive activities/visual
aids help students to learn; multiple
ways to solve a task. About 37% of the
future teachers found some misconceptions
students had on fractions. About 42% found
that use of interactive activities helped students
to learn and to connect with the subject
matter. About 16% future teachers
found it interesting that students viewed the
same task in different ways but still reached
the same conclusion (Figure 12). This category
shows that through this servicelearning
activity, future teachers were able
to see three important aspects of mathematics
teaching and learning. One aspect was to
see themselves the common misconceptions
children have about fractions, which they had seen only in textbooks so far. The second
was to witness that interactive activities
help children to connect their hands-on experience
with abstract mathematical concepts.
The third one was to convince themselves
that there could be multiple ways to
solve a mathematical task. These three aspects
will help these future teachers to teach
children.