Mathematics Teacher Candidates’ Metaphors about the Concept of “Mathematics”
Keywords:
Metaphor, Mathematics, Teacher candidates, Attitude.Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to research mathematics teacher candidates’ perceptions about the concept of “mathematics” through the use of metaphors. The research is conducted during 2012-2013 academic year, on a group of 111 mathematics teacher candidates at the Education Faculty of a University in Turkey. To collect the research data, each participant was asked to complete the prompt “Mathematics is like . . . because . . .” The content analysis technique was used in this study in order to evaluate the data collected. As a result of the data analysis, it was found that 67 valid metaphors were developed by the participants. These metaphors were grouped under 14 categories. According to these categories, about 77% of mathematics teacher candidates perceived mathematics as “Limitless”, “Interconnected”, “Basically needed”, “Fun”, “Cumulative”, “Indispensable” figure and as a figure which laid the “foundation for other sciences”. The remaining 23% perceived mathematics as “Hard-to-understand”, “Guiding”, “Universal language”, “Requiring continuity”, “Yet to be solved”, “Mind developing” and “Having single correct answer.”
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Articles may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Authors alone are responsible for the contents of their articles. The journal owns the copyright of the articles. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of the research material.
The author(s) of a manuscript agree that if the manuscript is accepted for publication in the journal, the published article will be copyrighted using a Creative Commons “Attribution 4.0 International” license. This license allows others to freely copy, distribute, and display the copyrighted work, and derivative works based upon it, under certain specified conditions.
Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to include any images or artwork for which they do not hold copyright in their articles, or to adapt any such images or artwork for inclusion in their articles. The copyright holder must be made explicitly aware that the image(s) or artwork will be made freely available online as part of the article under a Creative Commons “Attribution 4.0 International” license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
