PRE-SERVICE MIDDLE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ MATHEMATICAL KNOWLEDGE FOR TEACHING IN THE CONTEXT OF FUNCTIONAL THINKING

Date

2024-9-04

Author

Polatol, Zeynep Kübra

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The aim of this study was to examine the knowledge of middle school mathematics teacher candidates about teaching mathematics in the context of functional thinking. For this purpose, this study focused on the specialized content knowledge, knowledge of content and students, and knowledge of content and teaching of the teacher candidates. The participants of the study were four pre-service middle school mathematics teachers who were undergraduate students at the same public university in Ankara. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews lasting approximately fifty minutes. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the data. The results of the study showed that the participants were successful in generalizing both tasks involving functional thinking in terms of specialized content knowledge. While the participants made generalizations in the Task 1 involving only figures, they mostly made justifications based on numbers independent of the figure. They were able to make justifications based on context in the Task 2 involving real life situations. However, most of the participants had difficulty in producing more than one solution to the tasks. Regarding the knowledge of content and students, the participants were found to be able to make limited comments in predicting responses that the students might give. In addition, most of the participants were able to make comments in accordance with the student response in interpreting them. Regarding the findings about knowledge of content and teaching, it was seen that in wrong student responses and lower-level correct student answers, most participants took steps to take students to higher levels, but in higher-level student answers, they did not mention steps that would develop students' functional thinking, but instead took steps to have the student explain his/her answer. Discussion and implications were provided based on the findings.

Subject Keywords

Pre-Service Middle School Mathematics Teachers, Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, Functional Thinking

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111502

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis