An observational study in elementary mathematics classrooms

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate elementary mathematics classrooms in terms of mathematics content, teaching method, and the duration of mathematics lesson. Data for this research study comprised of 241 elementary mathematics lessons taught by 15 teachers working in different schools in Ankara. The results suggested, (a) in these lessons the topic was worthwhile to teach, the level of teaching was appropriate to the grade level, the topic was presented correctly but the connection between the topic of the lesson and other topics of math or daily life was not built. (b) Commonly used teaching method was lecturing and technique was question-answer; and the students studied individually. More than half of the lessons teachers did not use any material other than textbooks; (c) teachers were not successful at using the time efficiently.