Session Information
24 SES 09, (Emerging) Professional Development
Paper Session
Contribution
Values are the individual preferences made in the view of importance and value of a behavior (Clarkson, FitzSimons, Bishop, & Seah, 2000). Values in mathematics teaching were classified by Bishop (1988) as mathematics, mathematics education and general education. Similarly, Bishop (1996) classified mathematical values as complementary pairs: rationalism - objectivism, control - progress, mystery - openness. Values related to mathematics education are reflected in the pedagogical practices of school mathematics and they can affect mathematics learning (Seah, Baba, & Zhang, 2017). Therefore, values related to mathematics education may differ from culture to culture (Bishop, Clarkson, FitzSimons, & Seah, 2000). For example, in a study with mathematics teachers in Australia, values such as clarity, flexibility, consistency, open mindedness, persistence, accuracy, efficient working, systematic working, enjoyment, effective organization, creativity, conjecturing etc. (see Clarkson et al., 2000) have become prominent while in Turkey, values like relevance, usefulness, communication, tool, objectivism, progress, flexibility, aesthetics, applicability, consistent etc. (see Dede, 2012) have come to the forth. Against the backdrop of these findings, the current study sets out to focus on the mathematics educational values.
In the mathematics curricula (middle and high school) published in 2018, it can be seen that it was the first time some general educational values in Turkey have been included within them (see Ministry of National Education [Turkish: MEB], 2018a, 2018b). Although the program does not include the mathematics educational values, these values influence the teaching practices of teachers consciously or unconsciously. A similar situation applies to textbooks, and textbook writers – consciously or unconsciously– reflect their values to their books. For instance, Dede (2006a), in his study, examined the mathematics educational values in mathematics textbooks used in Turkey and it was determined that formalistic view, theoretical knowledge, instrumental understanding, accessibility and evaluation mathematical educational values were much more mentioned than their complementary pairs. But in the context of Turkey, although there were studies which examined mathematics educational values of mathematics teachers and mathematics educational values which were presented in mathematics books; there were fewer studies which focus on examining the mathematics educational values of pre-service mathematics teachers (for example, Dede, 2006b, 2011). In particular, it was seen that there was no study which examined mathematics educational values which took part in the questions prepared by mathematics pre-service teachers based on the learning outcomes of mathematics curriculum. In this context, the current study aims to examine the mathematical values that take part in the questions prepared by mathematics pre-service teachers. The research question of the study is:
What are mathematics educational values which take part in the questions prepared by mathematics pre-service teachers?
Method
This study was carried out using case study method. The case in this research is the pre-service mathematics teachers’ mathematics educational values. In this context, mathematics educational values which took part in the questions prepared by mathematics pre-service teachers were examined. Participants of this study were the pre-service mathematics teachers enrolled in a Turkish state university. They were recruited by criterion sampling method. The criterion for determining the participants was that the participants should take “Special Teaching Methods in Mathematics”, “Problem Solving and Posing Strategies”, “Assessment and Evaluation”, and “Mathematics Curriculum” courses. The reason for taking this criterion was that by taking these courses pre-service teachers can have knowledge about mathematical problem solving and posing strategies, mathematics teaching and learning strategies, assessment and evaluation methods. Thus, we aimed to ensure that pre-service teachers can design tasks and questions at a certain level by taking these courses.
Expected Outcomes
In this context, the participants were asked to prepare two mathematics questions in accordance with their learning outcome choices in the elementary mathematics curriculum. For example, a pre-service teacher prepared a question based on “A student solves first order equations with one unknown.” learning outcome. The question is: “The refinery is the facility where crude oil is processed and converted into more useful oil products such as gasoline and diesel. At an oil refinery in Turkey has a monthly 11 thousand tons of crude oil processing capacity. The price of crude oil is 350 TL. The facility employs 250 workers. The monthly cost of a worker is 2000 TL. 500 liters of petrol and 500 cubic meters of LPG are obtained by processing each ton of crude oil. The price of 1 liter gasoline is 5 TL, 1 m3 LPG is 2 TL. 200,000 tons of crude oil became unusable because of an accident. How many months does this refinery have to work to compensate for this loss?” This question may reflect “usefulness” and “applicability” values of mathematics education. The analysis of the data is still ongoing. Therefore, detailed discussions and findings will be provided later.
References
Bishop, A. J. (1988). Mathematical enculturation: A cultural perspective on mathematics education. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Bishop, A. J. (1996, June). How should mathematics teaching in modern societies relate to cultural values: Some preliminary questions? Paper presented at the Seventh Southeast Asian Conference on Mathematics Education, Hanoi, Vietnam. Bishop, A.J., Clarkson, P., FitzSimons, G., and Seah, W.T. (2000). Why Study Values in Mathematics Teaching: Contextualising the VAMP Project?, In W.S. Horng, & F.L. Lin, (Eds.). Proceedings of the HPM 2000 Conference on History in Mathematics Education, (Vo1.2, pp.147-154). National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei. Clarkson, P., FitzSimons, G., Bishop, A. & Seah, W. T. (2000, December). Methodology challenges and constraints in the values and mathematics Project. Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Sydney, Australia. Dede, Y. (2006a). Mathematical Values Conveyed by High School Mathematics Textbooks. Educational Sciences: Theory&Practice, 6 (1), 81- 132. Dede, Y. (2006b). Mathematics educational values of college students' towards function concept. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education, 2(1), 82-102. Dede, Y. (2011). Mathematics Education Values Questionnaire for Turkish Preservice Mathematics Teachers: Design, Validation, and Results. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education,9(3), 603 -626. Dede, Y. (2012). Why is Mathematics Valuable? A Comparison of Turkish and German Mathematics Teachers. Mathematics Education Bulletin- BOLEMA, 26(44), 1171-1206. Ministry of National Education [MEB]. (2018a). Primary and middle school mathematics curriculum. Ankara: Author. Ministry of National Education [MEB]. (2018b). Secondary school mathematics curriculum. Ankara: Author. Seah, W. T., Baba, T., & Zhang, Q. (2017). The WIFI Study: Students’ Valuing of Mathematics Learning. In Hong Kong and Japan. In What Matters? Research Trends in International Comparative Studies in Mathematics Education (pp. 333-354). Springer, Cham.
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