INVESTIGATING TEACHING PRACTICES FOR ALGEBRAIC EXPRESSIONS WITHIN A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY

Year 2017, Volume: 6 , 31 - 37, 04.08.2017

Dilek Girit Didem Akyuz

Abstract

As
effective teaching practices support students’ learning; it is essential to
investigate teachers’ teaching practices. It can also shed light on the causes of students’
difficulties.
In this regard, proposing teaching practices might be important as the
practices can give insight about what is going on in teaching process. Thus,
the aim of this study is to extract the practices by focusing on the teachers’
actions during the teaching of operations with algebraic expressions.
Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) model which is a practice-based
approach to the knowledge concept is used as a framework in this study. Thus,
this study focuses on teaching practices of operations with algebraic
expressions (addition, subtraction, and multiplication). Data were collected
from two middle school mathematics teachers’ instructions. The two teachers
were the cases in this qualitative research and the data were analyzed by
compare and contrast method. The practices that are found in the study are:
defining the concept of term, like term, constant term, and coefficient; using
equal sign; using analogies to explain addition and subtraction; using algebra
tiles; providing mathematical explanations for distributive property; and
noticing students’ misconceptions in simplification and equivalence of
algebraic expression. The results suggest that the conceptual teacher knowledge
influences teaching practices positively and teacher knowledge should be used
in appropriate pedagogical organization to develop teaching practices. 

Keywords

Algebraic expression, middle school mathematics teacher, teaching practice

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