Prospective teachers have initial beliefs related to mathematics and its teaching and learning in the beginning of their teacher education programs (Cooney, 1999). Teacher candidates generally believe that mathematics is an unchanging science, it is composed of rules, formulas, and algorithms, and these mathematical algorithms should be memorized after teachers’ representation (Ball, 1990). These initial beliefs have important role on shaping prospective teachers’ experiences in their teacher education programs (Pajares, 1992). However, teacher education programs are expected to shape prospective teachers’ beliefs in line with the recent reform movements in mathematics education, which is different than how they were taught (Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). Reform movements in mathematics education and the curriculum changes in elementary mathematics in Turkey require teachers to teach mathematics not only as the science of rules, formulas and algorithms, but also as the science of relationships and patterns (MONE, 2005). However, teacher education programs might not be so successful in training teachers with rich mathematics related beliefs for teaching. This lack of success could be the results of teacher education programs’ failure to specifically target prospective teachers’ mathematics related beliefs in line with reform ideas (Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). Therefore, prospective teachers’ beliefs related to mathematics and mathematics teaching become a very important indicator for the effectiveness of teacher education programs. Moreover, investigating the alteration and evolution of prospective teachers’ beliefs through teacher education programs provides vital information for reorganizing the structure of these programs and for strengthening prospective teachers’ development (Kagan, 1992). In this respect, the purpose of this study was (i) to investigate prospective elementary mathematics teachers’ mathematics related beliefs including beliefs about mathematics, teaching mathematics and learning mathematics and (ii) to examine the effects of year level in the teacher education program on these beliefs.

The participants of the study were a total of 137 prospective elementary mathematics teachers at a public university. These teacher candidates were enrolled in a four-year teacher education program focusing on teaching mathematics to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade level students. Participants were implemented a mathematics related beliefs questionnaire in the beginning of the fall semester. The questionnaire was prepared by the researchers and Cronbach alpha for the questionnaire was found as 0,84. The difference between the scores of different year-level participants was investigated through the ‘One way analysis of variance’ (One-Way ANOVA). In addition, Tukey HSD test was used to determine the difference between specific year-level participants’ belief scores.

The results of the one-way ANOVA showed that there was significant difference between the belief scores of prospective teachers from different year levels. Tukey HSD test showed that there was a significant mean difference between 4th-year prospective teachers and 2nd- and 3rd-year prospective teachers in terms of belief scores. Fourth-year prospective teachers’ belief scores were significantly higher than 2nd- and 3rd-year prospective teachers’ belief scores. The results indicated that there might be a cumulative impact of the teacher education program on prospective mathematics teachers’ mathematics related beliefs. Fourth-year students’ beliefs seemed to have influenced by the general methods course and the course on teaching methods of specific mathematics content they had recently enrolled. The results suggested that teacher education program courses should specifically target preservice teachers’ beliefs earlier in the program in order to prepare them more competent for the reform requirements.