Generative AI in Mathematics Teacher Education: Designing Simulated Students to Generate Approximations to Practice Around Equal-Sign Misconceptions.

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Generative AI in Mathematics Teacher Education: Designing Simulated Students to Generate Approximations to Practice Around Equal-Sign Misconceptions.
Authors: Tejera, Mathias1,2 mathias.tejera@utec.edu.uy, Parodi, Sebastián1 sebastian.parodi@utec.edu.uy, Galiç, Selen2 selen.galic@jku.at, Lavicza, Zsolt2 zsolt.lavicza@jku.at
Source: International Journal for Technology in Mathematics Education. 2026, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p57-63. 7p.
Subject Terms: *Simulation methods in education, *Instructional systems design, *Generative artificial intelligence, *Mathematics teachers, *Formative evaluation, Chatbots, Mathematical equivalence
Abstract: This paper reports the design and refinement of a generative-AI simulation for mathematics teacher education centred on equal-sign misconceptions. We developed three custom chatbots that simulate middle-school students (11-12 years old) who exhibit distinct operational interpretations of "=" across three research-based tasks: ..., a chained equality (4 + 5 = 9 + 3 = 12), and ... Each simulated student was paired with a short video depicting the student's incorrect reasoning and was engineered through persona prompting to sustain "student-like" dialogue (brief initial justifications, resistance to immediate correction, inconsistent improvement, and spontaneous doubts) to preserve teachers' opportunities to elicit, interpret, and respond to student thinking. In parallel, we designed a mentor chatbot that provides structured formative feedback (strengths, areas for improvement, suggestions) anchored in equal-sign instruction and responsive teaching. We describe iterative development and cross-linguistic adaptation that addressed common failure modes of GenAI-based simulations, such as overly articulate student responses and generic feedback. The paper contributes a practical design account of how prompt constraints, role separation, and taskmisconception alignment can make GenAI-based simulations more stable and instructionally useful as approximations to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database: Education Research Complete
Description
Abstract:This paper reports the design and refinement of a generative-AI simulation for mathematics teacher education centred on equal-sign misconceptions. We developed three custom chatbots that simulate middle-school students (11-12 years old) who exhibit distinct operational interpretations of "=" across three research-based tasks: ..., a chained equality (4 + 5 = 9 + 3 = 12), and ... Each simulated student was paired with a short video depicting the student's incorrect reasoning and was engineered through persona prompting to sustain "student-like" dialogue (brief initial justifications, resistance to immediate correction, inconsistent improvement, and spontaneous doubts) to preserve teachers' opportunities to elicit, interpret, and respond to student thinking. In parallel, we designed a mentor chatbot that provides structured formative feedback (strengths, areas for improvement, suggestions) anchored in equal-sign instruction and responsive teaching. We describe iterative development and cross-linguistic adaptation that addressed common failure modes of GenAI-based simulations, such as overly articulate student responses and generic feedback. The paper contributes a practical design account of how prompt constraints, role separation, and taskmisconception alignment can make GenAI-based simulations more stable and instructionally useful as approximations to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:17442710
DOI:10.1564/tme_v33.2.03