FUNCTIONAL THINKING OF PRE-SERVICE MATHEMATICS TEACHERS

Functional thinking can be characterized as the ability to generalize relationships between quantities and express these relationships by words, symbols, charts or graphs, and be able to deal with these various representations of relations in analyzing certain functional behavior.

Functional thinking and understanding of relationships between phenomena coupled with a developed spatial imagination are important preconditions for solving practical problems. Nowadays, great emphasis on the development of both thinking ability and on the ability to solve practical problems is put on the educational process at schools of all types.

Curricula of the Czech Republic targets the development of functional thinking, especially in the educational field Mathematics and its Applications, where specific requirements are provided for the development of functional thinking of pupils.

The subject matter of functions in mathematics lessons is considered as one of the possibilities for the development of functional thinking.

The paper presents some results of a research, which identifies and assesses functional thinking of mathematics students at faculties of education in the Czech Republic at the beginning of their university studies in the year 2012. In this research pre-service mathematics teachers solved problems with a functional content.