A case study of elementary mathematics teachers' views of their and students' textbook usage and of mathematics textbooks' characteristics

Download
2012
Başer, Nadiye
The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ ways of using mathematics textbooks while planning the lesson and during the lesson, to document teachers’ views about elementary students’ usage of mathematics textbook during the classroom time and for their homework and teachers’ views about mathematics textbooks’ characteristics. A case study was conducted in a private elementary school with more class hours for mathematics and six mathematics teachers teaching 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grade mathematics in this school participated. Data were collected in the spring semester of 2010-2011 academic year through an interview protocol with 16 main questions addressing teachers’ mathematics textbook usage and students’ mathematics textbook usage developed for this study by the researcher through the findings and discussions in the literature. Data analysis was conducted through qualitative methods. The findings of this study showed that participant teachers expressed both positive and negative views about characteristics of textbook and usage of textbook. All of them stated that the textbook was their main tool for lesson preparations and teaching. They followed the curriculum from textbook and decided what to do, how to do, and when to do. Participants underlined that textbook was an effective helper but it needed improvement in many aspects. The findings also showed that teachers viewed that students did not use their textbook efficiently. All of the teachers expressed that students did not prefer to study from textbook if there were not any assignment or homework. Teachers specified that students could improve studying habits from textbook if teachers could direct them efficiently. The findings of this study might be useful to prepare more effective lessons for teachers, to give ideas to teachers for guiding their students for effective textbook usage, and to increase the quality of textbooks.

Suggestions

Middle school mathematics teachers' use of textbooks and integration of textbook tasks into practice: a mixed methods study
Özgeldi, Meriç; Çakıroğlu, Erdinç; Erbaş, Ayhan Kürşat; Department of Elementary Science and Mathematics Education (2012)
The current study aimed to explore middle school mathematics teachers’ use of mathematics textbooks and examine their integration of tasks in the textbooks into teaching. The framework of a mixed methods research design guided data collection in this study. A questionnaire called the Use of Mathematics Textbooks Questionnaire was developed and validated to identify the ways teachers benefit from textbooks. The factor analysis revealed four dimensions, namely Reading Student Edition Textbook, Selecting Quest...
A study on pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge regarding the multiplication and division of fractions
Işıksal, Mine; Çakıroğlu, Erdinç; Department of Secondary Science and Mathematics Education (2006)
The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service mathematics teachers’ subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and the relationships between the two on multiplication and division of fractions. For this purpose, pre-service teachers’ understanding of key facts, concepts, principles, and proofs, their knowledge on common (mis)conceptions and difficulties held by the elementary students, their strategies of teaching these concepts, and representations they use to reason their understandin...
A Case study on middle grade mathematics teachers’ use of questioning in teaching lines and angles
Yılmaz, Ayşenur; Çakıroğlu, Erdinç; Department of Elementary Education (2018)
The purpose of the study was to identify tools that help teachers to use in teacher questioning in middle-grade mathematics classrooms. In addition to this, the study aimed to examine teachers’ questioning behaviors concerning teachers' question types and the interaction among the tools for questioning and question types. This study was applied a multiple case with two middle grade mathematics teachers. The participant teachers were video recorded for the lines and angles topic. In one of the classroom, tec...
Developing eighth grade students’ mathematical practices in solids through argumentation: a design-based study
Şahin Doğruer, Şule; Akyüz, Didem; Department of Elementary Education (2018)
The purpose of this study was to obtain classroom mathematical practices of eighth graders’ during the concept of solids and to test the effectiveness of this content in an eighth-grade mathematics classroom. In this respect, an instructional sequence was used with guidance of a hypothetical learning trajectory. The context was basic elements of prisms, their surface area, basic elements of cylinder, its surface area and its volume. The process continued through four and half weeks. Argumentations, dynamic ...
An Investigation of teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking in the context of a professional development program
Baş, Sinem; Erbaş, Ayhan Kürşat; Çetinkaya, Bülent; Department of Secondary Science and Mathematics Education (2014)
Teachers’ noticing, i.e. attending to and understanding of, students’ mathematical thinking is considered as a crucial component of teaching expertise. Research points out the pressing need for developing teachers’ abilities to notice students’ mathematical thinking through appropriate professional support, while also making sense of the dynamics of how such development occurs. The purpose of this study is to investigate evolution of teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking in the context of a ...
Citation Formats
N. Başer, “A case study of elementary mathematics teachers’ views of their and students’ textbook usage and of mathematics textbooks’ characteristics,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2012.