Pre-service Teachers’ Noticing of 7th Grade Students’ Errors and Misconceptions about the Subject of Equations

Abstract

Teacher noticing is one of the issues that math educators have given importance recently. The noticing-raising skills that require a professional vision beyond their use in daily life requires a series of activities within the framework of prior learning by the teacher, then interpreting and providing appropriate feedback. Investigating the level of awareness in pre-service teacher trainees will provide a foresight for future education. In the field of algebra learning, it has been identified in previous studies that primary school students experience various misconceptions and have a trouble. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the misconceptions and errors of 7th grade students about equations and to observe their noticing of these errors and misconceptions. Participants of the study, in which qualitative research methods have been adopted, are 3 student and 3 mathematics teacher candidates with medium and high academic achievement. As a means of data collection, in the scale of error and misconceptions about equations was utilized and teacher candidates' awareness of these responses was investigated. At the end of the study, it was found that the success of the attending step was not sufficient for the other steps.