No abstract

Although parent engagement is widely supported by research, it is largely absent in the secondary mathematics classroom. Limited preservice teacher education and perceptions surrounding teacher professionalism are discussed as barriers to engaging parents. Math teachers are additionally inhibited by the antagonistic portrayal of parents in the literature and in the media, e ectively alienating parents in the minds of teachers. We suggest a shift in the language used to discuss math education and the positioning of parents regarding knowledge as a way to enable parent engagement and build relationships of trust, which can transform otherwise di cult exchanges between teachers and parents.

Within the limited field of research on teachers’ probabilistic knowledge, incorrect, inconsistent and even inexplicable responses to probabilistic tasks are most often accounted for by utilizing theories, frameworks and models, which are based upon heuristic and informal reasoning. More recently, the emergence of new research based upon logical fallacies has been proving effective in accounting for certain normatively incorrect responses to probabilistic tasks. This article contributes to this emerging area of research by demonstrating how a particular logical fallacy, known as “an appeal to ignorance,” can be used to account for a specific set of normatively incorrect responses provided by prospective elementary and secondary mathematics teachers to a new probabilistic task. It is further suggested that a focus on the classical approach to teaching theoretical probability contributes to the use of this particular logical fallacy.