Preservice teachers' understanding and representation of fractions in a javabars environment

In recent years, considerable research effort has been inested ni identifying the nature of the knowledge that drives mathematics teachers' actions hi the classroom. While this inestigation has generated a useful body of infformation, there has been little information about changes hi the character of this knowledge when teaching involves the use of tectmology. In this paper, I address this issue by examing a group of preservice primary mathematics teachers' misunderstanding of fractions. The participants were required to order fractions within software called JavaBars. The results suggest that, while the preservice teachers had built up robust kalowledge about fractions, they experienced difficulty hi translating this knowledge in the JavaBars environment.