A STUDY TO ANALYSE THE QUALITY OF PROBLEMS POSED BY PRE-SERVICE MATHEMATICS TEACHERS ON SQUARE ROOT EXPRESSIONS

Abstract

In this study, it was aimed to examine the problems that the pre-service mathematics teachers posed about the square root expressions. 35 pre-service teachers studying in the third grade of the middle school mathematics teaching department of a state university participated in this study in which the case study method was used. Each pre-service teacher was asked to pose 2 free problems related to the square root expressions. The collected data were analyzed according to the framework created by the researcher in line with the literature. Accordingly, the problems that the pre-service mathematics teachers posed were examined in terms of mathematically, data quality, grammar and expression, instructions and amount of data in the problems, solvability and overall assessment (availability). As a result, it was seen that pre-service teachers generally set up problems involving daily life, more than half of the problems they set up were solvable, but there were also problems that could not be solved due to logic errors, conceptual errors and lack of mathematical instructions.  In addition, although there were errors in terms of language and expression in the problems, the majority of the pre-service teachers used language and expression at an adequate level.