Case Study of Pre-service Teacher Education for Mathematical Modelling and Applications Connecting Paintings with Mathematics

The purpose of this chapter is firstly to investigate how graduate teacher education students critiqued and validated mathematical models through connecting paintings and the mathematical domain and secondly to analyse the students’ decision-making. A meta-question posed by the researchers for the students was to find geometric figures which may be hiding behind paintings in order to explain them to an audience of the Otsuka Museum of Art. Students’ critique and validation of the achieved mathematical models for their decision-making resulted from interdisciplinary or extra-mathematical considerations. To realise the meta-question, students performed their demonstration to an audience with a diversity of knowledge and skills.