Abstract:

Since beliefs of teachers affect their instruction practices, beliefs have been a study domain of educators and mathematics educators for a long time. Thus, beliefs of prospective teachers, who will be the education leaders in the future, about mathematics, mathematics teaching and mathematics learning were researched in this study. 276 prospective teachers (124 prospective mathematics teachers, 152 prospective primary school teachers) were participated in the study. Descriptive method was used in the study. Data were gathered by a belief scale consisted of 6 sub-scales. In analysis of data “t test” was used to determine whether beliefs of prospective teachers change or not in terms of their genders and departments, “One-Way ANOVA” was used to determine whether beliefs of prospective teachers change or not in terms of their grade levels and also percentage (%) and arithmetic mean ( ̅x) were used in the study. As a result of data analysis it was seen that non-traditional belief levels of prospective teachers about mathematics, mathematics teaching and mathematics learning were higher than their traditional beliefs. There was not found a significant difference between traditional and non-traditional beliefs of prospective teachers in terms of gender. However, a little difference between their traditional and non-traditional beliefs in terms of class level was obtained.

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