Middle School Mathematics Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Regarding Student Knowledge about Quadrilaterals

Abstract

Abstract Pedagogical content knowledge is consisted of two components: student knowledge and teaching strategies. Student knowledge was defined to sub-categories as connecting prior knowledge to new knowledge, noticing students’ mistakes, identifying students’ difficulties of understanding. The aim of this study is to examine middle school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in terms of student knowledge regarding quadrilaterals. Interview method was used for data acquisition. 30 middle school mathematics teachers working at 12 different schools in Turkey participated in this study. The questions asked the teachers during interviews were prepared by researchers in accordance with student knowledge component of the pedagogical content knowledge. Content analysis was used to analyze the data acquired in this study. The study results show that teachers pointed out that they teach lessons taking into consideration their students’ previous knowledge and new knowledge they do by “reminding quadrilaterals students previously learnt” or “making association between similar quadrilaterals. Based on the data, the teachers pointed out the students’ mistakes about quadrilaterals were group under three headings. These are, mistakes regarding defining quadrilaterals, mistakes regarding visual property and, classification of quadrilaterals and family relation within quadrilaterals. The students’ difficulties inferred from teachers’ responses are summarized in two groups: difficulties identified related with trapezoid and difficulties identified related with other quadrilaterals. Key words: Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Student Knowledge, Quadrilaterals