OBSERVED ACTIONS IN PRE-SERVICE ELEMENTARY TEACHERS' MATHEMATICAL MODELING ACTIVITIES

This study examined the characteristics of mathematical modeling activities that emerged while pre-service elementary teachers solved a mathematical modeling task. Thirty-two first-year pre-service teachers were organized into six groups and guided through the six stages of the mathematical modeling cycle, comprising understanding, simplifying and structuring, mathematizing, working mathematically, interpreting, and validating. Each group's modeling process was audio-recorded, transcribed, and systematically analyzed using a coding framework derived from the cognitive perspective of the mathematical modeling cycle, with Modeling Transition Diagrams employed to visualize stage specific activity patterns over time. The results indicated that most groups concentrated their activity in the simplifying and structuring stage, while some groups became excessively immersed in real world contextual reasoning without progressing toward formal mathematization. These findings reveal specific bottlenecks in student driven mathematical modeling and suggest that timely pedagogical scaffolding is likely necessary to support smoother transitions across modeling stages.