May 2004, Vol. 35, Issue 3
Understanding Primes: The Role of Representation
Rina Zazkis, Peter Liljedahl
In this article we investigate how preservice elementary school (K-7) teachers understand the concept of prime numbers. We describe participants' understanding of primes and attempt to detect factors that influence their understanding. Representation
of number properties serves as a lens for the analysis of participants' responses. We suggest that an obstacle to the conceptual understanding of primality of numbers is the lack of a transparent representation for a prime number.
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