The impact of teacher education program courses on preservice teachers’ mathematics related beliefs has been a concern in the recent years. The reason is the general agreement that preservice teachers carry their existing beliefs to the teacher education programs (Cooney, 1999) and filter their program experiences through their beliefs (Pajares, 1992). However, changing preservice teachers’ existing beliefs is not easy since beliefs are resistant to change (Kagan, 1992). Preservice teachers are likely to maintain their existing beliefs while forming new ones in the teacher education programs (Ambrose, 2004). It is reported that changing preservice teachers’ mathematics teaching related beliefs by a single methods course is difficult (Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996). Rather, general epistemological beliefs might be a good place to start developing mathematics related beliefs (Gill, Ashton & Algina, 2004). Several studies have shown while certain teacher education courses seemed to have some impact on the preservice teachers’ beliefs, the extent of the impact does not last long. Therefore, there is a need to develop teacher education programs in which beliefs are targeted consistently throughout the program, not only in a single course (Joram & Gabriele, 1998). Program-long intervention to change or develop beliefs also requires program-long monitor of beliefs. This study investigates the impact of the mathematics teacher education program in Turkey on preservice mathematics teachers’ beliefs through the second year in the program where they start to enroll in teaching-related courses. The mathematics teacher education program focuses on mathematics courses in the first and second years and mathematics teaching and general pedagogical courses in the third and fourth years. The students start taking teaching related courses in their second year. The study intends to continue monitoring mathematics related beliefs in the following years. It is expected that mathematics pedagogical content knowledge courses will have more impact on the preservice teachers’ mathematics related beliefs throughout the program.

This study is a repeated measures design with an intervention. The participants of the study are 33 female and 10 male pre-service teachers at the 2nd year of a 4-year mathematics teacher education program. The participants are the students in a general teaching methods course offered by the researchers. The course is the first teaching-related course that the participants take and is concentrated on the curriculum issues in Turkey and the use of teaching methods in mathematics teaching, without any content focus. Participants are required to design and implement six teaching-learning activities for elementary grades. A mathematics related beliefs questionnaire prepared by the second researcher is implemented in the beginning (Time 1) and at the end (Time 2) of the Fall semester 2008. The questionnaire will be implemented in the beginning and at the end of the Spring semester 2009.

The Cronbach alpha coefficient is found .74 for the pre-test scores and .79 for the post-test scores, which indicate good levels of internal consistency (Field, 2005). A paired-samples t-test is conducted to evaluate the impact of the course on students’ scores on the belief questionnaire. Assumptions such as normal distribution of difference scores are met. Results show a statistically significant increase in the scores from Time 1 (M = 3.83, SD = 0.216) to Time 2 (M = 3.95, SD = 0.249), t (28) = -3.11, p < .005 (two-tailed). The mean increase in belief scores was 0.12 with a 95 % confidence interval ranging from 3.83 to 3.95. The eta square statistic, h2 is found as .26, indicating a large effect size (Green & Salkind, 2008). The results of the statistical analysis show that the course has a significant effect on preservice mathematics teachers’ beliefs.