Primary teacher' approach to measurement estimation activities

Estimation appears as a relevant aspect to the new Curricular Guidelines of year 2012 of the Chilean Ministry of Education. In this paper, we analyze the mathematical knowledge for teaching of 112 Chilean teachers of Primary Education to deal with a classroom activity of discreet measurement estimation proposed in governmental curricular orientations. The qualitative-descriptive analysis developed in our study is supported by a reconstruction of the concept of measurement estimation. The results show that the knowledge of a significant part of the participant teachers presents some deficiencies, since they either propose to develop the activity without including perceptive abilities or they propose an action limited to a measurement exercise. Only 13.1% of the teachers state that when using the example given for estimation a perceptive-type exercise is required.