Zuhal YILMAZ’s research while affiliated with University of California, Riverside and other places

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education started at K-12 levels in the spring semester of the 2019-2020 school year. The Ministry of National Education had also published instructional tasks to be used in distance education at all grade levels in order to create mathematics learning opportunities for students and to provide resources for teachers. Well-structured and high-quality instructional tasks play an important role in students' learning mathematics. The aim of this study is to examine the quality of the elementary school mathematics tasks recommended for distance remedial education from multiple perspectives, in particular their cognitive demand levels. A total of 85 tasks focusing on 79 critical objectives in grades 1-4 mathematics were examined using document analysis. Results of this study showed that the majority of the tasks were at low cognitive demand level, cognitive demand levels did not show a balanced distribution, and some tasks had mathematical errors.

Function is a multifaceted and essential concept in mathematics that includes various complex ideas such as mapping, relations between variables, algebra, input-output, and rule. Pre-service mathematics teachers’ (PMTs) should have a rich understanding of these ideas for their future teaching practices. However, research showed that PMTs had a limited and superficial understanding of function as students do. Thus, a learning module was designed for improving PMTs’ conceptualizations of function ideas as they relate to their personal concept definitions and examples of functions. A design-based research study was conducted with 17 senior PMTs. The study results suggest an improvement in the way PMTs define functions and identify a variety of function ideas in definitions and examples. Even if the mapping idea became dominant among all ideas in PMTs’ personal concept definitions and examples, they could identify the implicit function ideas and develop an understanding of connections between ideas. We also provide suggestions for the second cycle of the intervention.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented situation that influenced all aspects of society, including education. Millions of students found themselves adjusting to a new medium of mathematics instruction, not to mention the teachers who had to provide instruction through remote sources. Considering students’ diverse social, economic, and academic background, this study sought to examine teachers’ perspectives on factors that support or hinder how equity is attended to in mathematics during remote instruction and the extent it differed from practices utilized when instruction was provided in a face-to-face setting. We also sought to document teachers’ perspectives on how they attended to equity in mathematics to support students with language barriers. We interviewed nine teachers to explore their perspectives of factors that support or hinder equity in mathematics teaching and learning during remote instruction compared to face-to-face instruction and how they support the diverse needs (inclusive of language barriers) of students. There were salient factors in this study that supported or hindered equitable mathematics instruction, such as teachers’ beliefs, expectations for students, access to resources, students’ socioeconomic status, and language barriers. Hence, it is recommended that policymakers, school administrators, and teachers need to collaborate to systematically plan to ensure that all students have access to quality mathematics.

Özet – Ders kitapları öğretmenlerin en çok kullandıkları ders materyalleri arasında yer almaktadır. Ders kitaplarının değerlendirilmeden derslerde bire bir kullanılması öğretimi doğrudan etkilemektedir. Bu sebeple göreve başlayacak olan öğretmen adaylarının ders kitaplarını nasıl değerlendiklerinin incelenmesi önemlidir. Bu çalışmanın amacı matematik öğretmen adaylarının fonksiyona ait üç farklı fikri benimseyen üç farklı ders kitabını nasıl değerlendirdiklerini belirlemektir. Çalışmada adayların ders kitaplarının fonksiyona giriş bölümleri için yazdıkları değerlendirme raporları incelenmiştir. Çalışma sonucunda adayların ders kitaplarındaki farklı fonksiyon girişlerine matematiksel ve pedagojik gerekçeler göstererek eleştirel bir gözle bakabildikleri ortaya çıkmıştır. Buna rağmen adayların sundukları matematiksel gerekçeleri yeterli düzeyde açıklayamadığı görülmüştür. Ayrıca adayların giriş bölümlerinde var olan günlük hayat örneklerine çok fazla önem verdikleri fakat bu örneklerin fonksiyonu matematiksel olarak temsil edip etmediğini yeterince irdelemedikleri görülmektedir.