An Examination of Middle School Mathematics Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge Regarding Prime Numbers
Abstract
This study examines middle school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) regarding prime numbers. The study focuses on three subcomponents of PCK: Subject matter knowledge, knowledge of students’ understanding, and knowledge of instructional strategies. A case study method, one of the qualitative research approaches, was employed. The participants consisted of 12 middle school mathematics teachers. Data were collected through the Prime Numbers Knowledge Test (PNKT) and semi-structured interviews developed by the researchers. The data were analyzed using content analysis. The findings revealed that mathematics teachers demonstrated limited PCK, particularly in the components of subject matter knowledge and knowledge of instructional strategies. Specifically, it was observed that teachers provided definitions and responded to questions related to prime numbers without including negative integers, indicating gaps in their subject matter knowledge. Regarding the knowledge of students’ understanding component, participants showed satisfactory competence and performed better than in the other two components. Findings revealed that the teachers had a high level of awareness regarding students' learning difficulties, errors, and misconceptions, and they were able to correctly answer the questions posed by the researchers in this regard. Despite this relative strength, teachers’ knowledge of instructional strategies was notably weak. Although teachers confused the concepts of strategy, method, and technique, they still applied these in their teaching practices. The presentation teaching strategy, the discovery-based teaching strategy, and the question-and-answer technique were identified as the most frequently implemented by the participants.
Keywords
middle school mathematics teachers, pedagogical content knowledge, prime numbers
Ethical Statement
This research was approved by the Ethics Commission of the researcher’s institution (Approval Date: 27.12.2022; Decision No: E-34659092-605.01-66908793).
Thanks
The authors would like to thank all the participants for their valuable contributions to this study.
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