The attitudes of the elementary school mathematics teacher candidates towards proof in the mathematical modelling proccess

Abstract

The need of using and understanding mathematics is gaining importance in daily life and this importance is growing gradually. The most important goal of mathematics education is to obtain logical answers in response to questions 'why?' and 'how?'; in other words, the goal is to ensure the development of reasoning. It is observed in this study that whether there are any changes in the attitudes of the candidates towards proof and proofs based on mathematical modeling. This study consists of two parts which are to test pre-post attitudes. 60 students who are in their third year of BA education attended to this search. They are enrolled in Balikesir University Necatibey Education Faculty Elementary Mathematics Education in 2010-2011 Spring Term. Intentional sampling is used in selecting the sample. 'Attitude Scale to Proof', developed by Uzel and Ozdemir (2009)- five point Likert Scale-is used to explore the attitudes of the candidates. This scale Cronbach Alpha coefficient is found .897. The item-total correlations were between .50 - .82. The data is evaluated by SPSS 17.0 Programme to determine percentages, frequencies and t-test for correlated survey. Finally, 10 teachers are interviewed in order to examine the attitudes of teachers in greater depth. As a result of this study, teachers' attitude scores using traditional methods is very low towards the proofs and mathematical modeling show higher scores in the attitude towards the proofs. In addition it is revealed that the candidates think the proof with modeling more understanding, easy and effective than the traditional method. It is recommended to integrate the proof process and the modeling process. However, it may be suggested that different proofs in different areas of mathematics should be evaluated at different levels in mathematical modeling process.