The analysis of pre-service teachers' beliefs about mathematical problem solving

Abstract

There are many extracurricular and classroom factors that should be considered in developing problem solving skills of students in teaching Mathematics. Students who acquired the ability of problem solving will not only be successful in their lessons but also will have skills to overcome problems that they will experience in their real lives. Problem solving includes the combination and coordination of various skills, beliefs, attitudes, intuitions, knowledge and previous acquisitions. For this reason, it has a key role in teaching mathematics. The purpose of this study is to analyze pre-service teachers' beliefs about mathematical problem solving in terms of various variables. For this purpose, the data was collected from 310 third-year students who are studying in teaching mathematics, classroom teaching and teaching science departments from two public universities in Istanbul. Belief Scale about Mathematical Problem Solving was used as a data collection instrument (Haciomeroglu, 2011). The data were analyzed by using statistical software. The correlation of some variable to pre-service teachers' belief about mathematical problem solving was analyzed. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.