Abstract
The knowledge that the mathematics teachers should have is a privileged knowledge beyond the basic concepts and concepts. One of the components of this knowledge is noticing students’ mathematical thinking. In particular, in the field of algebra, it is necessary for the teacher to have this kind of awareness in order to make sense of pattern generalization processes and to identify sources of errors. The aim of this study is to investigate the awareness of mathematics teacher candidates about students pattern generalization processes. For this purpose, students’ real answers consisting of different types of approaches and strategies were used as the data collection tool. This study employs the qualitative research methods and the participants are 35 prospective teachers taking the “teaching algebraic concepts” course in mathematics teaching department at a state university in 2015 – 2016 academic year. According to the research findings, prospective teachers can be considered successful in recognising students’ visible strategies; nevertheless the explanations provided by the prospective teachers on finding out the reasons that lie beneath the student mistakes are unsatisfactory.