Who should study mathematics education in teacher education programs? Personality approach

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to answer the question of who should study in mathematics education in teacher education programs. More specifically, we examined the relationship between vocational personality and satisfaction with becoming a mathematics teacher in the future. The Holland's theory of personalities in work environments served as the theoretic framework for the current study. According to Holland, there are six vocational personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. The participants were 138 senior pre-service mathematics teachers in Turkey. Correlation analysis revealed that satisfaction is positively related to social, artistic and conventional but negatively related to realistic dimension of vocational personality. Stepwise regression analysis revealed that social, realistic and conventional dimension of personality made a significant contribution to the equation predicting satisfaction. Based on these findings, it seems that Holland's theory offers a useful framework for addressing the question of who should study mathematics education. Mathematics education seems to be an ideal profession for those with social and conventional personality traits. However, it seems that it is not an ideal profession for those with realistic personality traits. We believe that educators and counselors can use the Holland's theory to help students decide if mathematics education fits their personality.