Mathematics Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Involving the Relationships between Perimeter and Area

Abstract

This study aims to investigate and compare mathematics teachers’ knowledge of pedagogical content, knowledge of students’ understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies, subcomponents of pedagogical content knowledge, student errors in the relationship between perimeter and areas in rectangles, squares, and parallelograms. 10 pre-secondary school in-service mathematics teachers and 10 prospective mathematics teachers participated in the study. The qualitative case research approach was used. To collect the data, an interview form consisting of four questions showing student errors related to perimeter and area was prepared. The participants were asked to comment on the questions given in the form, and their answers were recorded. Later, they were asked to write down their answers to these questions. According to the outcomes, there is a lack of knowledge of students’ understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies, which are the subcomponents of the pedagogical content knowledge of prospective mathematics teachers. Moreover, prospective teachers are found to be incompetent as regards the necessary mathematical subject matter knowledge. To prevent difficulties, when the concepts of perimeter and area are taught, instead of giving formulae initially, concrete materials or real-life examples about these concepts should be provided. Keywords: pedagogical content knowledge, perimeter, area, mathematics teachers, prospective mathematics teachers.

Factors influencing mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge: A systematic review

“…When compared to novice teachers, experienced teachers are more likely to use more instructional approaches in response to student performance cues (Ekmekci et al, 2019). Furthermore, according to the findings, prospective teachers have fewer PCK than inservice teachers (Yilmaz & Demir, 2021). It has been believed that the lack of prospective teachers' experiences or subject matter knowledge leads to this phenomenon.…”

“…The results of the study detailing professional development showed a good effect on PCK. For instance, professional development programs (Ekmekci et al, 2019;Hidayat & Setyawan, 2020;Maboya et al, 2022;Sarkim, 2020), content-focused professional development (Richter et al, 2021), model/ professional training/ teacher training/ collaboration programs (Gambini & Lenart, 2021;Jeschke et al, 2021;Kurt-Birel et al, 2020;Manderfeld & Siller, 2019;Saputra et al, 2019;Sunzuma & Maharaj, 2019;Tang, 2018;Yildiz & Akyuz, 2019;Yilmaz & Demir, 2021), seminar/ workshops/ in-service training (Ansah et al, 2020;Chang et al, 2020;Kurt-Birel et al, 2020;Moh' d et al, 2021), educational course/ pedagogy course (Lau, 2019;Lee et al, 2018), school based continuous professional development/ on-site professional training (lesson study) (Helmbold et al, 2021;Mhakure, 2019), structured interventions/ professional learning workshops (Hilton & Hilton, 2018), regular meetings (Taylan et al, 2022), microteaching course/ microteaching/ teaching practicums (Setyaningrum et al, 2018) and a two-week summer institute (Schoen et al, 2019) were implemented to enhance mathematics teachers' PCK level effectively. Notably, terms such as model, professional training, teacher training and collaboration program were frequently used to represent professional development in most of the studies.…”

“…However, literature underlines that many primary and secondary school mathematics teachers, on the other hand, have been proven to be lacking in PCK-related factors around the globe. This includes Malaysia (Ishak et al, 2019;Rahman et al, 2018), South Africa (Ansah et al, 2020), Indonesia (Hidayat & Satyawan, 2020;Saputra et al, 2019), Africa (Moh'd et al 2021) and Turkey (Aksu & Kul 2019;Kurt-Birel et al 2020;Yilmaz & Demir 2021). Although numerous studies have been conducted into the factors causing this issue, there are still significant issues exist with prior research and a dearth of studies, especially with systematic literature reviews/ meta-analysis study/ meta-synthesis studies (Depaepe et al, 2013;Rahman et al, 2018;Şimşek & Boz, 2016;William & Maat, 2020).…”