Measuring pre-service teachers' mathematics content knowledge and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge on ratio and proportion

Abstract

This study investigated pre-service teachers’ Mathematics Content Knowledge (MCK) and Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge (MPCK) on ratio and pro portion. MCK and MPCK instruments (Ekawati, Lin, & Yang, 2015) were translated to Turkish to conduct the study with senior pre-service middle school and secondary school mathematics teachers from twelve different universities including both the secondary and primary education departments. Data were gathered from 590 senior pre-service teachers in total. Data was analyzed both descriptively and also using confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. Results from confirmatory factor analysis aligned with (Ekawati et al., 2015) showed that there were three factors for MCK-T and results from the exploratory factor analysis showed that there were three factors for MPCK-T. Re sults regarding MCK of both preservice middle and secondary school mathematics teachers showed that they were very successful at questions requiring procedural an swers. However, they were not able to reason on questions requiring to distinguish proportional situations from non-poportional situations as well as the questions having figural representations. Similarly, results regarding MPCK of both pre-service middle school and secondary school mathematics teachers showed that although they were able construct problems related to ratio and proportion, they were not able to take into consideration students? reasoning and back-ground knowledge. By the same to ken, neither they were able to determine students? misconceptions nor were they able to provide feedback based on their misconceptions. Results also suggested that all pre-service teachers knew few student strategies.