Abstract:

The aim of this study was to investigate prospective middle school mathematics teachers’ use of computational strategies in multiplication and division of decimals. In this respects, the focus was the teachers’ performances, strategies, and errors in placing the decimal point in multiplication and division with decimals. The participants were 49 prospective middle school mathematics teachers in a public university. The data were collected through a written test which included two sets of items on multiplication and division with decimals. Descriptive statistics (frequency) and qualitative content analysis were used in the data analysis. The findings revealed that most of the teachers placed the decimal point correctly while conducting multiplication and division operations with decimals. In addition, their written explanations on their answers were divided into two categories as rule based strategy and computational estimation based strategy. It was seen that while the methods of convert to fraction, rote memorization, expand the fraction and convert to exponential notation were categorized under the rule based strategy, the methods of front-end, benchmark and rounding were categorized under the computational estimation based strategies. In addition, few participants who gave incorrect answers made errors in using the methods of rote memorization and convert to fraction.

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