Explaining the Impossibility of Division by Zero: Approaches of Chinese and Korean Middle School Mathematics Teachers

The present study explores mathematics teachers' understanding of division by zero and their approaches to explaining the impossibility of division by zero. This study analyzes Chinese and Korean middle school mathematics teachers' responses to the teaching task of explaining the impossibility of dividing 7 by zero, and examples of teachers' reasoned explanations for their answers are presented. The findings from this study suggest that most Korean teachers offer multiple types of mathematical explanations for justifying the impossibility of division by zero, while Chinese teachers' explanations were more uniform and based less on mathematical ideas than those of their Korean counterparts. Another finding from this study is that teachers' particular conceptions of zero were strongly associated with their justifications for the impossibility of division by zero, and the influence of the teachers' conceptions of zero was revealed as a barrier in composing a well-reasoned explanation for the impossibility of division by zero. One of the practical implications of this study is those teachers' basic attitudes toward always attempting to give explanations for mathematical facts or mathematical concepts do not seem to be derived solely from their sufficient knowledge of the facts or concepts of mathematics.