Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education

231-258

Authors: Fatih Baş, Ahmet Işık

The aim of this study is; evaluated the web-based and face to face information sharing context between teachers and academicians from the viewpoints of the participants. Web-based context has 13 academician - 72 teacher and face to face context has 6 academicians -17 teachers participants. The holistic case study method was adopted in the study and the data were collected via unstructured interviews with 5 teachers and 5 academicians who participated in the information sharing processes in both contexts. The content analyses were conducted and the findings showed that coming together and sharing information were considered a positive aspect of these contexts by teachers and academicians. The participants stated that there were some factors decreasing their participation rate in the web-based context stemming from the structure of web-page, the posts in the page, views of the participants and necessary conditions. However, the participants added that teachers having similar teaching applications decreased their information sharing in the face to face context. It was recommended to use both context together based on the recommendations from the participants and the relevant literature.

274-303

Authors: İbrahim Çetin, Ercan Top

Students experience difficulties in learning computer programming. Researchers have conducted several studies with different perspectives to help students learn programming. The ACE cycle constructed in the context of mathematics education was adapted to programming education and called PACE cycle. The aim of the study was to test effectiveness of the PACE cycle by using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The sample of the study included 62 mechanical engineering students. The students were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Experimental group was instructed by using PACE cycle whereas control group was instructed by using ‘traditional instruction’. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered before and after the treatment. It was found that there is no significant difference between achievement and attitude scores of experimental and control group students. Nevertheless, it is hard to announce PACE cycle as ineffective depending only on this result. Qualitative data showed that students, in the control group, did not percieve their instruction as traditional one. This might show us that the definition of ‘traditional instruction’ can change depending on the context. It might be the case that students’ perception and experience related to their instruction affected the results of the study.

119-136

Authors: Hasan Topçu, Sevda Küçük, Yüksel Göktaş

The aim of this study was to reveal the opinions of elementary school pre-service teachers about the usage of educational mathematics games in elementary mathematics teaching. In this study, case study that, one of qualitative research methods, was used. Data were collected by utilizing a semi-structured interview form to these elementary school pre-service teachers and analyzed using by content analysis method. A total of 10 junior pre-service teachers enrolled in undergraduate programs of elementary teaching attended to this research. In conclusion, these pre-service teachers indicated that educational computer games would provide benefits such as making students’ learning more permanent, visualizing concepts, making students love mathematics, learning by entertaining, reinforcing what has been learnt and developing thinking skills. Nevertheless, these elementary school pre-service teachers stated the limitations about educational computer games such as causing addiction and physical damages, being time-consuming, requiring special equipment and software and making class management difficult. Besides, it was revealed that the pre-service teachers demonstrated positive attitudes towards the use of games in courses while that they did not feel themselves competent in terms of application.

158-175

Authors: Dilek Sezgin Memnun

In this research, it was aimed to determine the deficiencies of secondary school fifth- and sixth-grade students on word problem solving and their failures in this process. For this purpose, four separate word problems were asked to the students and their written answers were taken at the implementation process. The analysis of the data suggests that a significant part of these secondary school students had deficiencies during word problem solving and their failures in this process. Moreover, these deficiencies and failures were reported to be related to the understanding of word problems and the planning for solutions in the solving process. In addition, it was found that the fifth- and sixth- grade students rarely attempted to use drawing in order to solve the word problems. They mostly had deficiencies in deciding which arithmetic operations to be used while approaching the problems and they had failures at their arithmetic operations.

39-59

Authors: Çağla Toprak, Işıkhan Uğurel, Gökçe Tuncer

Today- when the influence of the alteration movement done in order to keep up with the age of the educational system is still continuing- the importance of teachers in students’ learning and achieving what is expected from the education system has been stated by the studies conducted (Hazır & Bıkmaz, 2006). Teachers own a critical role in the stage of both preparing teaching materials and using them (Stein & Smith, 1998b; Swan, 2007). When the existing curriculums –in particular, maths and geometry cirriculums- are analyzed, it can be observed that activities are the most significant teaching materials (Bozkurt, 2012). In fact, it is possible to characterize the existing curriculums as activity-based ones (Report of Workshop Examining Content of Primary School Curriculums According to Branches, 2010; Epö, 2005). Therefore, what sort of learning activities there are, what qualities they need to have, how to design and apply them are topics that must be elaborated (Uğurel et al., 2010). At this point, our study to increase the skills of pre-service teachers during the process of developing activities was conducted with 27 pre-service teachers -19 girls 8 boys- studying in the 4th year in Mathematics Education Department at a state university in the Aegean Region. The activity designs the pre-service teachers developed considering the patterns given after a series of practice were analyzed in documents in terms of the aim of design and the form of practice. As a result of the studies, it is observed that pre-service teachers deal with the topics from the maths curriculum and these topics are of different grade levels. The result of the examination named as target component suggests that activities developed aim firstly at providing learning and this is followed by reinforcing the concepts already learned. It is stated that pre-service teachers prefer mostly small group (cooperative) studies in the activities they develop. Key Words: Learning activity, mathematics learning activity, pre-service teachers of mathematics, mathematics education.

73-88

Authors: Sare Şengül, Hande Gülbağcı Dede

Number sense involves efficient strategies and the ability to think flexibly with numbers and number operations and flexible thinking ability and the inclination getting for making sound mathematical judgements. The aim of this study was to investigate the strategies used by mathematics teachers while solving number sense problems. Eleven mathematics teachers from a graduate program in education were the participants. A number sense test which has a total of 12 problems is used as the data gathering tool. Teachers’ responses and strategies were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. First, participants’ responses were evaluated for correctness. Then the strategies teachers used were analyzed. The strategies were categorized as based on the use of number sense or rule based strategies. When the correct and incorrect responses were considered together, in the 46% of the responses number sense strategies were used and in 54% the rule-based strategies were used. The results of this study showed that even though teachers can use number sense strategies at some level, there is still room for development in teachers’ number sense. Key Words: Number sense, number sense strategies, mathematics teachers