Metaphor perceptions of pre-service teachers towards mathematics and mathematics education in preschool education

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify the thoughts of pre-service teachers, who play an important role in the early preschool experience of children in mathematics, towards the concepts of mathematics and education of mathematics with the help of metaphors. The study group of the research consists of a total of 227 pre-service teachers at the Department of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, Cukurova University in the 2013-2014 academic years. The data of the study were collected by asking preservice teachers to complete some sentences like "do you think, education of math is like …. in the preschool education; because Math is like …; because….". The responses obtained from pre-service teachers were categorized by content analysis. As a result of the study, seven categories created by preservice teachers towards the concepts of mathematics and education of mathematics are as follows: the source of life-itself, mathematics using skills of mental processes, math facilitating the fun learning, cumulative math facilitates life, complicated math difficult to learn and boring math. There are 223 metaphors in 112 types in this category. Considering the categories created, there are five positive and two negative categories. The rates of positive categories were calculated as 88.8%, while the rates of negative categories were 11.2%,. This shows that pre-service teachers produce mostly positive metaphors about mathematics and education of math and they have positive beliefs. As a result of the research, the categories like the source of life-itself, mathematics using skills of mental processes and math facilitating the fun learning come to the forefront.