Investigation of the Preschool Teacher Candidates’ Philosophical Views on the Nature of Mathematics

Abstract

Teachers’ views on the nature of maths have a crucial effect on their interactions with children, their choice of method and technique to be used while preparing the curriculum, their decision on the type and frequency of activities to be applied, their behaviors in the classroom, children’s attitudes towards maths and their achievement. With this research, it is aimed to examine teacher candidates’ philosophical views on the nature of maths. The research is in relational scanning model. “The Scale of Philosophical Thoughts on the Nature of Mathematics” was implemented to 141 pre-school teacher candidates studying in 2019-2020, which constitute the sample of the study. As a result of the analysis, it has been found that 52.5% of teacher candidates have an absolutist view, the views of female and male teacher candidates support each other and there is a significant difference between the grade level in they study.