Abstract

Here, I discuss the role of covariational reasoning in mediating one preservice mathematics teacher’s (PST’s) understanding of the link between carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution and global warming. I used Thompson and Carlson’s (2017) levels of covariational reasoning to inform the discussion of results. Jodi, the PST, completed a mathematical task I created for the study during an individual, task-based interview. The analysis of Jodi’s responses revealed that Jodi’s covariational reasoning supported increasingly sophisticated images of the link between CO2 pollution and global warming as it developed from No Coordination Level to Chunky Continuous Level. A surprising finding suggests that covariational reasoning can involve two quantities changing simultaneously but in different intervals of conceptual time, which I have not seen previously reported in the literature. Finally, the study suggests that the implemented task is a suitable point of entry to study mathematics of global warming