Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Views of the Sources of Students’ Mathematical Difficulties

Erhan Bingolbali; Hatice Akkoç; Mehmet Fatih Ozmantar; Servet Demir

doi:10.29333/iejme/260

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Erhan Bingolbali, Hatice Akkoç, Mehmet Fatih Ozmantar, Servet Demir

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Abstract

This paper examines the views of pre-service and in-service teachers with regard to the sources of students' mathematical difficulties. A group of 40 pre-service mathematics, 15 in-service mathematics and 15 in-service elementary teachers participated in this study. Questionnaires are used as data collection tools to see what the participants think about the sources of student difficulties. The notion of "obstacles to learning" is used as a framework to analyze the collected data. The analysis is carried out on the basis of three main categories to which participant teachers attribute students' difficulties: epistemological causes, psychological causes and pedagogical causes. The data analysis reveals that both pre-service and in-service teachers tend to attribute students' difficulties to student-related factors, namely psychological causes. We discuss the findings in terms of these three sources of learning difficulties, educational implications and note the usefulness of the employing the “obstacles to learning framework” in examining not only students' learning difficulties but also teachers' views of the sources for student difficulties.

Keywords

obstacles to learning
sources of students’ mathematical difficulties
teacher views

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INT ELECT J MATH ED, Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2011, 40-59

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/260

Publication date: 04 Apr 2011

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How to cite this article

APA

Bingolbali, E., Akkoç, H., Ozmantar, M. F., & Demir, S. (2011). Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Views of the Sources of Students’ Mathematical Difficulties. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 6(1), 40-59. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/260

Vancouver

Bingolbali E, Akkoç H, Ozmantar MF, Demir S. Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Views of the Sources of Students’ Mathematical Difficulties. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2011;6(1):40-59. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/260

AMA

Bingolbali E, Akkoç H, Ozmantar MF, Demir S. Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Views of the Sources of Students’ Mathematical Difficulties. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2011;6(1), 40-59. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/260

Chicago

Bingolbali, Erhan, Hatice Akkoç, Mehmet Fatih Ozmantar, and Servet Demir. "Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Views of the Sources of Students’ Mathematical Difficulties". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education 2011 6 no. 1 (2011): 40-59. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/260

Harvard

Bingolbali, E., Akkoç, H., Ozmantar, M. F., and Demir, S. (2011). Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Views of the Sources of Students’ Mathematical Difficulties. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 6(1), pp. 40-59. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/260

MLA

Bingolbali, Erhan et al. "Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Views of the Sources of Students’ Mathematical Difficulties". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, vol. 6, no. 1, 2011, pp. 40-59. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/260