Mathematics teachers' knowledge of student thinking and its reflections on their instruction

Abstract

The aim of study is to examine mathematics teachers' knowledge of students' thinking and reflections on their teaching. The study was based on a case study design and the participants were three mathematics teachers. Data were gathered from interviews and two-class hour observations for each teacher. A video camera was used during the interviews and the lessons observations and all the recordings were verbatim transcribed. While analyzing data, the framework about knowledge of students' thinking was used. The finding showed that each teacher mainly considered the knowledge of students' thinking as knowing students' prior knowledge. They expressed that they benefited from questions to find out students' ideas, promoted students to use different solutions for problems, and had ideas on mistakes and difficulties their students may be confronted. The participants also took into account students' prior knowledge in their lessons, but they did not consider their students' difficulties, mistakes and misconceptions unless students asked questions to them. They had the limited approach for building on students' mathematical ideas, promoting students' thinking about mathematics, eliciting different ideas and consider them, engaging students in mathematical learning, and motivating students to learn.