Investigation of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ understanding on solids

The aim of the present study is to determine the elementary pre-service mathematics teachers’ understanding on solids. For this purpose, pre-service teachers’ definitions and drawings of these objects were examined. Qualitative research method was used. A written questionnaire consisting of sixteen open-ended and multiple-choice questions was conducted with 127 elementary pre-service mathematics teachers chosen by convenience sample which is one of non-random sampling method. The collected qualitative data were analyzed by both descriptive and content analysis. The results revealed that pre-service teachers made insufficient connections among cylinder, prism, cone and pyramid. So, it can be said that their understanding about solids was weak and procedural.

Negotiating Identity Within Diverse Educational Ideologies

We know that teachers’ identities and their ideological assumptions of teaching and learning mathematics are critical in influencing their teaching and thinking about classroom practices. To better understand prospective mathematics teachers’ identity during teacher education, this study investigates how two participants negotiate their identity within the different ideologies they experience during their teacher education program. This study takes the position that prospective mathematics teachers’ identities are understood in terms of the narratives they construct and tell about themselves and others. By using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this study reveals that the participants either experienced a non-negotiation of identity or a negotiation of a new identity. We know that prospective mathematics schoolteacher’s identity and ideology have substantial consequences for the teaching and learning of mathematics. The educational ideology of mathematics, within the context of their teacher education program, can further shape the prospective teacher’s identity about the discipline. This study suggests greater focus on prospective mathematics teacher identities and ideologies and indicates the support they need through teacher education to be equipped for their future role as mathematics teachers.

Content and Problem Analysis in Turkish and Singaporean Mathematics Textbooks: The Case of Multiplying Fractions

In this study, Turkish and Singaporean textbooks were compared in terms of teaching content for multiplying fractions, a subject that most students have difficulty in understanding. The study analyzed the 6th-grade mathematics textbook published by the Turkish Ministry of National Education and its Singaporean counterpart. While the Singaporean textbook covered all meanings of multiplying fractions, the Turkish textbook did not include the operator meaning of multiplying fractions. Compared to the Turkish textbook, the Singaporean textbook included more solution strategies. The number line model was not used in the textbooks of either country, and only one representation format was used to model a fraction multiplication problem. The Singaporean textbook included more fraction multiplication problems than did the Turkish textbook. Many problems in both textbooks were of a one-step fashion and required numerical answers.

Mathematics Teacher Education in Turkey through the Lens of International TEDS-M Study

This paper is a part of a broader study which aims to investigate mathematics teacher candidates' mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) by using the Turkish translated versions of TEDS-M (Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics) Primary and Secondary Released Items. The sample of the study comprised freshman (first year) and senior (fourth and fifth year) students from primary and secondary mathematics teacher education programs. Firstly, this study aimed to examine differences in MKT of teacher candidates at the beginning and at the end of their undergraduate education. For both departments, senior students had statistically significant higher scores than freshman students. Secondly, this study also aimed to examine participating Turkish preservice mathematics teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching by using international results of TEDS-M Study. Participating senior preservice teachers’ correct response percentages were higher than international average in all domains except “data” in primary level, and “data”, “mathematical modelling” and “symmetry” in secondary level. The common content domains where primary and secondary preservice teachers’ percentages were lower than international average is “data”. In this paper, these areas will be examined within the context of Turkish education.

Academic Motherhood in Mathematics Education during COVID-19: Breaking the Silence and Shifting the Discourse

Despite decades of social change and institutional reform, the academic gender gap continues to exist in many countries around the world and disproportionately affects women with children. Early indicators suggest that COVID-19 will widen this gap and exacerbate issues academic mothers face. In this essay we seek to raise awareness to the challenges and tensions academic mothers in mathematics education face both outside of and during a pandemic. We use existing literature on academic motherhood to make sense of our lived experiences, working to reframe pieces that are so often viewed as deficits to assets for our work in mathematics education. We hope that this will bring visibility to the invisible ways our identities as mothers inform our work as mathematics teacher educators and researchers. We conclude this essay with a call for the university-based mathematics education community to break the silence around the inequities associated with academic motherhood in our field and to shift the discourse from deficits of academic mothers to asset orientated views.

Onto-semiotic complexity of the Definite Integral

Teaching and learning Calculus concepts and procedures, particularly the definite integral concept, is a challenge to teachers and students in their academic careers. In order to develop an informed plan for improving instructional processes, it is necessary to pay attention to the nature and complexity of the mathematical features of the definite integral, that students are expected to understand and apply. In this research, we supplement the analysis made by different authors, applying the theoretical and methodological tools of the Onto-Semiotic Approach to mathematical knowledge and instruction. The goal is to understand the diverse meanings of the concept of the definite integral and potentials semiotic conflicts based on the given data. We focus attention on a first intuitive meaning, which involves mainly arithmetic knowledge, and the definite integral formal meaning as Riemann’s sums limit predominantly in the curricular guidelines. The recognition of the onto-semiotic complexity of mathematics objects is considered as a key factor in explaining the learning difficulties of concepts, procedures and its application for problem-solving, as well as to make grounded decisions on teaching. The methodology analysis of a mathematical text, which we exemplify in this work applying the tools of Onto-Semiotic Approach, provides a microscopic level of analysis that allows us to identify some semiotic-cognitive facts of didactic interest. This also allows for the identification of some epistemic strata, that is, institutional knowledge that should have been previously studied, which usually goes unnoticed in the teaching process.

The Didactic Notion of “Mathematical Activity” in Japanese Teachers’ Professional Scholarship: A Case Study of an Open Lesson

This paper investigates how Japanese mathematics teachers produce and share didactic knowledge together. It is a case study of a post-lesson reflection meeting so-called open lesson. The crucial idea of this study is the dialectic between the specific and generic level of foci of the participants’ reflections about the observed teaching practice; namely, about applied teacher’s specific didactic technique for achieving a specific mathematical goal, and more general pedagogical issues such as realisation of the objectives of mathematics education. This dialectic is mediated by the meso-level notion of mathematical activity, described in the guidelines for Japanese national curriculum. The application of the scale of levels of didactic co-determination, provided by the anthropological theory of the didactic into the analysis shows in what way the dialectic interplay between the teachers’ comments with focus of the specific and generic levels influences the development and establishment of the Japanese teachers’ shared professional scholarship.