An investigation of prospective elementary mathematics teachers’ strategies used in mathematical problem solving

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2012
Avcu, Seher
The purpose of this study was to investigate the prospective elementary mathematics teachers’ use of strategies and their achievement levels in solving mathematical problems with respect to year level. The data were collected from 250 prospective elementary mathematics teachers enrolled in an elementary mathematics education program from a state university in Central Anatolian Region. Problem Solving Test (PST) was used to accomplish the purpose of the study. The data collection tool adapted by the researcher included nine open ended problems. In this study, item based in-depth analysis was employed to determine a variety of problem solving strategies used by prospective teachers.The frequencies and percentages of categories were gathered for each item and for each year level. The results of this study revealed that prospective elementary mathematics teachers’ problem solving achievement was moderately high. Prospective elementary mathematics teachers in each year level were able to use various problem solving strategies to a certain extent. More specifically, the results indicated that ‘making a drawing’ and ‘intelligent guessing and testing’ strategies were among the most prominent strategies frequently used by prospective teachers. Setting up an equation and using a formula was other strategies used by prospective teachers. On the other hand, finding a pattern strategy was the least frequent strategy used by prospective teachers.

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Citation Formats
S. Avcu, “An investigation of prospective elementary mathematics teachers’ strategies used in mathematical problem solving,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2012.