Beliefs of Prospective Teachers about Mathematics, Mathematics Teaching and Mathematics Learning

Adem Duru, Resul Göl
2016 Adıyaman University Journal of Educational Sciences   unpublished
Since beliefs of teachers affect their instruction practices, beliefs have been a study domain of educators and mathematics educators for a long time. Thus, beliefs of prospective teachers, who will be the education leaders in the future, about mathematics, mathematics teaching and mathematics learning were researched in this study. 276 prospective teachers (124 prospective mathematics teachers, 152 prospective primary school teachers) were participated in the study. Descriptive method was used
more » ... in the study. Data were gathered by a belief scale consisted of 6 sub-scales. In analysis of data "t test" was used to determine whether beliefs of prospective teachers change or not in terms of their genders and departments, "One-Way ANOVA" was used to determine whether beliefs of prospective teachers change or not in terms of their grade levels and also percentage (%) and arithmetic mean (̅ x) were used in the study. As a result of data analysis it was seen that non-traditional belief levels of prospective teachers about mathematics, mathematics teaching and mathematics learning were higher than their traditional beliefs. There was not found a significant difference between traditional and non-traditional beliefs of prospective teachers in terms of gender. However, a little difference between their traditional and non-traditional beliefs in terms of class level was obtained. Extended Abstract Purpose Studies in mathematics education (Dougherty, 1990; Thompson, 1984, Thompson, 1992) emphasized that beliefs of teachers about mathematics and mathematics teaching played an important role in shaping their educational behaviours. Thus, as researchers in other domains, mathematics educators were interested in studies about beliefs and several mathematics educators around the world researched beliefs of teachers (Ernest, 1989;
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