Analyzing Pre-service Primary Mathematics Teachers’ Skills to Determine Errors in Problems Posed by Students

Abstract

Article History: Received 07.12.2013 Received in revised form 15.07.2014 Accepted 11.08.2014 Available online 02.12.2014 In the study, it was aimed to determine the skills of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers in identifying the errors which the middle school seventh grade students made in addition of proper fractions. The study was conducted with 64 pre-service teachers studying as senior students in the department of Elementary Mathematics Teaching. In this study of descriptive research method used, data were collected in two sections. In the first section, seventh grade students were applied a Problem Posing Test. In the second section, pre-service elementary teachers were administered the Error Determination Test involving six problems with errors selected among problems posed by students. The pre-service teachers were asked to identify and explain the errors in the problems. The responses given by pre-service elementary teachers were analyzed according to the error types determined in the problems. The results of the study show that the pre-service teachers experienced difficulty in identifying the errors and made different errors in explaining the errors. © 2014 IOJES. All rights reserved