EJMT Abstract

Students have difficulty working with the parameter concept when solving mathematical word problems and when working in mathematical contexts. Technological tools can be used to overcome such difficulties and one type of the technological tools which has been recently used in the mathematics classroom is the spreadsheets. This article describes how preservice teachers experienced solving mathematical word problems using the spreadsheets and how they developed their notions of algebraic concepts, especially the parameter concept, as a result of this use. The findings indicate that the preservice teachers developed their utilization of the spreadsheet environment to solve word problems. At the same time, they decreased the difficulties they confronted when working with parameters (before using the spreadsheets) and developed their notion of this concept (as a result of working with the spreadsheets), but they did not grasp the concept fully.