An Investigation of the Questions Prepared by Pre-Service Middle School Mathematics Teachers on Fraction Concept

An Investigation of the Questions Prepared by Pre-Service Middle School Mathematics Teachers on Fraction Concept

Knowledge of assessment is considered as a dimension for professional knowledge of teachers (Magnusson, Krajcik, & Borko, 1999) since assessment and measurement of teachers’ knowledge is vital for quality issues in education. For this reason, the questions prepared by pre-service elementary mathematics teachers on fractions were investigated in the current study in order to observe pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of assessment in mathematics education based on fraction concept. By investigating the questions prepared by pre-service teachers, the quality of questions and the competency of teachers for preparing appropriate questions based on particular objectives were evaluated. 34 pre-service middle school mathematics teachers (3rd grade) were participated to the study. Case study design was employed and data was analyzed by the use of qualitative data analyses techniques. The tasks were investigated under three categories, knowing, applying, and reasoning based on cognitive domain framework (Mullis & Martin, 2013). Results show that pre-service teachers prepared traditional tasks in general. That is, the questions included routine mathematical operations and procedures. Therefore, they were classified to knowing and applying categories. In general, routine mathematical tasks were preferred by pre-service teachers rather than non-routine mathematical tasks which require reasoning level abilities. 

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