THE IMPEDIMENTS ENCOUNTERED WHILE LEARNING MATHEMATICS BY EIGHT GRADE STUDENTS

Mathematics is seen by many people as the best way to get a good life and a good career. It is also thought as an assistant to understand life and the world and to produce ideas about them. Therefore, new reform studies are being held to construct a new system that assists students to learn mathematics in a comprehensive way (Dursun & Dede, 2004). The importance of mathematics lessons and how to teach mathematics are increasing because of its potential to develop scientific thinking in accordance with the contemporary conditions and to implement these abilities into students’ daily life (Yildiz & Uyanik, 2004). Despite these studies, most of the students perceive mathematics as a difficult lesson and get low grades from mathematics tests. Therefore, the impediments in the mathematics learning process have been seen necessary. The aim of this research is to take the students’ opinions about the impediments while learning mathematics. The questionnaire prepared by researchers was given to 8th grade students. In the questionnaire, questions about mathematics lessons, mathematics teachers and mathematics learning process were asked to the students. The questions were edited by the experts’ opinions. The impediments in the mathematics learning process were determined with regard to the students’ opinions. The results will be presented and based on these results, some recommendations will be given.  Article visualizations

MATHEMATICS TEACHER CANDIDATES NOTICE HOW?

The aim of this research is to examine how mathematics teacher candidates' expressions about what they noticed in videos changed with video-clubs. The study group consisted of 5 teacher candidates studying in the 4th grade of Mathematics Education Department. The data of the study, which used focus group interviews that one of the qualitative research methods, consisted of students' notes while watching the videos and focus group interview video recordings. For the analysis of the data, content analysis that is one of the qualitative data analysis methods was used. Changes in the ways in which teacher candidates expressed the situations they noticed during the meetings were examined separately. It has been determined that teacher candidates’ expressions change according to the teacher they see in the video. If the teacher candidates like the teacher on video, they will use a more affirmative language, if they do not like the teacher in the next video, they will suddenly become critical and judgmental. Article visualizations

PROSPECTIVE MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ ABILITY TO IDENTIFY MISTAKES RELATED TO ANGLE CONCEPT OF SIXTH GRADE STUDENTS

In the present study we try to highlight prospective mathematics teachers’ ability to identify mistakes of sixth grade students related to angle concept. And also an examination of prospective mathematics teachers conceptions of angle. Study was carried out with 30 sixth-grade students and 38 prospective mathematics teachers. Sixth grade students required to define the concept of angle with their own statements and describe what it brought to their minds by writing their responses on a paper.  Students written responses were examined by the researchers and students’ mistakes in their definitions were determined. A data collection form that included students’ definitions of angle (correct, partly correct, incorrect) was obtained. Prospective teachers were required to define the concept of angle with their own statements and evaluate whether sixth grade students’ responses were correct by explaining the reasons in written form. The data obtained from written forms of prospective teachers were analysed through the descriptive analysis technique. Candidate's' comments they have made in response to each student are coded. The results of the research show that prospective mathematics teachers didn’t have problems in determining students' definitions of angle as correct, incorrect or partially correct. But they have problems about expressing the students’ failures and to clearly identifying the mistakes in the incorrect definitions of students. Additionally, almost all of the candidates have made only the static definition of the angle concept.  Article visualizations

Matematik öğretmeni adaylarının fark etme becerilerinin video-kulüp uygulamalarıyla gelişim sürecinin incelenmesi

Araştırmanın amacı, matematik öğretmeni adaylarının fark etme becerilerinin kesirler bağlamında video-kulüp uygulamalarıyla gelişim sürecini incelemektir. Fark etme, bir sınıfta neler olduğunu yorumlama ve anlamlandırma becerisidir (Frederiksen, 1992; Berliner, 2001; Mason, 2002). Öğretmenler için anahtar nokta sınıf ortamında neyin çok önemli olduğunu belirlemek ve bu durumlar hakkında akıl yürütmektir (van Es ve Sherin, 2006). Neyin önemli olduğunu tanımlayabilmeyi ve bu durumlar üzerinde akıl yürütüp, gözlemlenenleri anlamlandırmayı kapsamaktadır (van Es ve Sherin, 2002). Bu kavram, öğretmenin sınıfta kaçırdığı ve yakaladığı bütün noktaları göz önünde bulundurarak, ders boyunca neye, kime, nerede, ne zaman, neden ve nasıl dikkat ettiğine odaklanılması anlamına gelmektedir (Sherin, Jacobs ve Philipp, 2011).Araştırmanın katılımcılarını İstanbul’da bir devlet üniversitesinin Eğitim Fakültesi Matematik Öğretmenliği 4.sınıfında öğrenim görmekte olan 5 öğretmen adayı oluşturmaktadır. Nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden durum çalışmasının kullanıldığı çalışmada veriler odak grup görüşmeleriyle toplanmıştır. Araştırmanın verilerini öğretmen adaylarının video-klipleri izlerken aldıkları notlar ve video-kulüp kayıtları oluşturmaktadır. Video-kulüpler veri kaybını önlemek için hem ses kayıt cihazı hem de kamera ile kayıt altına alınmıştır. Video-kulüp buluşmaları ses ve video kayıtlarının transkriptleri yapılarak yazılı doküman haline getirilmiştir. Bu yazılı dokümanlar üzerinden analizler yapılmıştır. Veriler içerik analiziyle kodlanmıştır. Elde edilen kodlar doğrultusunda kategoriler belirlenmiştir. Alanyazından yararlanarak kategoriler uygun temalara yerleştirilmiştir. Öğretmen adaylarının buluşmalar süresince fark etme becerilerindeki değişim bu tema ve kategoriler çerçevesinde incelenmiştir. Öğretmen adaylarının fark ettikleri durumların zaman içerisinde öğretmenden öğrenciye, fark edilen durum karşısındaki ifadelerinin ise eleştirel cümlelerden betimleyici ve yorumlayıcı cümlelere doğru değişiklik gösterdiği görülmüştür. Öğretmen adaylarının video-kulüplerde en çok dikkatlerini çeken temanın öğretmen olduğu görülmüştür. Öğretmen adayları az da olsa öğrenciye dair söylemlerde bulunmuşlardır. Ancak bu söylemler çoğunlukla öğrencilerin sınıf içi tavır ve davranışlarıyla sınırlı kalmıştır.Çözüm önerisi getirme konusunda öğretmen adaylarının ifadelerinin genellikle kitabi bilgi düzeyinde kaldığı ortaya koyulmuştur. Yani teorik olarak belli önerilerde bulunmuş olsalar da çözümlerin uygulanabilirliği konusu belirsizlik göstermiştir. Öğretmen adaylarının pedagojik alan bilgisine yönelik değerlendirmelerinin de doğru veya yanlış olduğunu duydukları öğretim stratejileri bağlamında olduğu görülmüştür.Video-kulüp uygulamaları sırasında öğretmen adayları birbirlerinin video-klipler hakkında neler düşündüğünü duymuş, birbirlerine katıldıkları veya katılmadıkları durumlar ortaya çıkmıştır. Başka bir ifadeyle video-kulüp uygulamaları sırasında öğretmen adaylarının birbirlerinden etkilenmeleri kaçınılmaz hale gelmiştir. Dolayısıyla süreç boyunca öğretmen adaylarının fark etme becerilerinin değişiminde ve gelişiminde bu durumun rol oynadığı söylenebilmektedir. Gözlem sonuçları ve bulgular alanyazın doğrultusunda tartışılmıştır.--------------------The aim of this research to investigate how the mathematics prospective teachers’ noticing change with video-club applications in the context of fractions. Teacher noticing is the ability to interpret and make sense of what is in a class (Frederiksen, 1992, Berliner, 2001, Mason, 2002). The key point for teachers is to identify what is most important in the classroom environment and to reason about these situations (van Es and Sherin, 2006). It includes identifying what is important and making sense of the observations by reasoning on these situations (van Es and Sherin, 2002). This concept means focusing on what, when, where, when, why, and how they pay attention throughout the lesson by taking into account all the points the teacher has missed and captured in class (Sherin, Jacobs and Philipp, 2011).The participants of the research had constituted 5 mathematics prospective teachers from the 4th grade of Department of Mathematics Education at the education faculty of a state university in Istanbul. The data was collected with focus group interviews in the study which the case study from the qualitative research methods was used. The data of the research consists of notes that prospective teachers write while watching the video-clips and video-club records. Video-clubs are recorded with both audio recorder and camera to prevent data loss. Video-club meetings have been made into written documents by making transcripts of audio and video recordings. These written documents were analyzed. The data are coded by content analysis. Categorized according to the codes obtained. The categories were placed in appropriate themes by using the literature. The change of the prospective teachers’ noticing during the meetings has been examined within the context of these themes and categories. It was seen that the focus of the prospective teachers changed over time from the teacher to the student and the expressions of noticed situations changed over time from critical sentences to the descriptive and interpretive sentences. It has been seen that teacher become the most eye-catching theme of the prospective teachers in video-clubs. The prospective teachers have also made discourses about the student, if at all. However, these discourses were mostly confined to classroom attitudes and behaviors of students.It has been revealed that the statements about bringing the solution proposal of prospective teachers are generally at the approaches of textbooks. In other words, although some theoretical suggestions were made, the applicability of the solutions was uncertain. The prospective teachers’ evaluation of pedagogical content knowledge has been found to be in the context of instructional strategies they have learned to be true or false.During video-club applications, prospective teachers have heard of each other's thoughts about the video-clips, and there have been cases where they have either attended or disagreed with each other. In other words, it has become inevitable for prospective teachers to be influenced by each other during video-club applications. Thus, it can be said this situation plays a role in the change and development of prospective teachers’ noticing throughout the process. Created themes and categories are discussed in accordance with the literature

The analysis of pre-service teachers' beliefs about mathematical problem solving

There are many extracurricular and classroom factors that should be considered in developing problem solving skills of students in teaching Mathematics. Students who acquired the ability of problem solving will not only be successful in their lessons but also will have skills to overcome problems that they will experience in their real lives. Problem solving includes the combination and coordination of various skills, beliefs, attitudes, intuitions, knowledge and previous acquisitions. For this reason, it has a key role in teaching mathematics. The purpose of this study is to analyze pre-service teachers' beliefs about mathematical problem solving in terms of various variables. For this purpose, the data was collected from 310 third-year students who are studying in teaching mathematics, classroom teaching and teaching science departments from two public universities in Istanbul. Belief Scale about Mathematical Problem Solving was used as a data collection instrument (Haciomeroglu, 2011). The data were analyzed by using statistical software. The correlation of some variable to pre-service teachers' belief about mathematical problem solving was analyzed. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd