Changing Pre-service Primary-school Teachers’ Attitude Towards Mathematics by Collaborative Problem Solving

Abstract

Primary school teachers’ attitude towards Mathematics influences their pupils’ attitude. A pupil with a positive attitude is more likely to develop his/her mathematical problem solving skills, thus developing a positive attitude towards Mathematics in case of pre-service primary school teachers is very important. This paper presents the results of a research on de efficiency of collaborative problem solving in changing pre-service primary school teachers attitude towards Mathematics. During the intervention in the experimental group collaborative learning methods was used; in the control group the problem solving was made with more traditional way, using individual and frontal activities. The results show that students from the experimental group had a statistically significant positive change on how much they like Mathematics; their beliefs in the utility of Mathematics improved; and after the intervention they liked more to solve non-routine problems.