Preservice elementary teachers' perceptions of tasks: Stances and misconceptions that hinder analysis

Abstract Research has indicated using high‐quality tasks is a critical first step in developing effective teaching practices, but preservice teachers often struggle to identify such tasks. Transactional theory, which asserts the meaning made from text, in this case, a mathematics task, is reliant upon the reader's purpose (stance) and prior knowledge for reading the text. This theory was used as a lens for analyzing preservice teachers' justifications for why they did or did not believe a 2nd‐grade place value task met the criteria for a constructed rubric for evaluating high‐quality tasks. The goal of this study was to investigate (a) the misconceptions present for 27 elementary pre‐service teachers' analysis of the task, and how the misconceptions influence their analysis and (b) the stance with which they analyzed the task, deemed high‐quality by the researchers, and how their stance influenced their analysis. Findings indicated the preservice teachers' purpose, that is, their stance, when reading the task hindered them from considering the task's full potential for student learning. Additionally, an evaluation of pre‐service teachers' justifications revealed misconceptions about the role of academic content standards and the learning trajectory for place value. Suggestions for addressing these challenges and for future research are discussed.