Abstract

This article describes a qualitative research case study that aimed to explore the complexity levels and types of mathematical thinking and national mathematics standards that a group of preservice teachers (PSTs) used to write mathematics word problems for secondary school students. The context was a teacher preparation course at a public university located in a rural region in Colombia, South America. The collected data included PSTs’ community reports, audio recordings of small-group discussions, and mathematics word problems. The data analysis process encompassed inductively created codebooks, several rounds of coding, and the inter-rater technique. The findings of the study demonstrated that most word problems written by the PSTs aligned with a few national mathematics standards and different potential levels of mathematical thinking. However, there was a disconnect between these levels of mathematical complexity and the types of funds of knowledge identified. The article ends by sharing implications for mathematics teacher education and suggestions for future research.