Prospective Mathematics Teachers' Perceptions on and Adaptation of Student-Centered Approach to Teaching

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ perceptions on and adaptation of student-centred approach to teaching. The study was conducted with 58 prospective secondary mathematics teachers during Teaching Methods course in 2014-2015 fall academic year in a western university in Turkey. In this mixed method study, Constructivist Learning Environment Survey was administered to the participants, and reflection papers were collected at the end of the semester in order to understand whether and how prospective teachers adapted student-centred curriculum into their teaching. The selected videos of the class discussions were also analyzed for triangulation. The findings indicated that there was an improvement on prospective teachers’ scores on CLES indicating that the instruction helped them improve their perceptions towards student-centred approach to teaching. It was also found that prospective teachers’ perception towards student-centred approach to teaching was organized under several themes, and they satisfied several expectations of the approach during microteaching.