Investigation of repsetentation and making connections skills of pre-service mathematics teachers in mathematical modeling process

Looking at the sub-competencies of mathematical modeling, which has been studied intensively in mathematics education in recent years, it has been seen that making making connections skills and representation skills have an important place in the process. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of pre-service mathematics teachers making connections skills and representation skills used on the mathematical modeling process. In order to reveal this, the mathematical modeling competencies of pre-service teachers, the types of mathematical connections used in the process and the types of representation were examined. The study group consists of 10 pre-service teachers studying at a university in Ankara. Participants worked on the 'Beytepe Monoray Problem' modeling activity prepared for the purpose of the research. The study is a qualitative study. As the data collection tools, 'Beytepe Monoray Problem' effectiveness, Making Connections Skill Test for function, derivative and integral concepts, semi-structured interview questions and Modeling Competencies and Indicators by Maaß (2006), which have been converted into a data collection tool, were used. The data were analyzed by descriptive analysis method. Among the results, the pre-service teachers who use the most verbal representation in the modeling process are the most successful in the algebraic notation of the types of representation. It was observed that they preferred graphic representation at the stage of understanding the problem, but mostly failed to switch between representation types. In addition, it was observed that pre-service teachers who were successful in the Making Connections Skill Test were unsuccessful in the model-eliciting activity. Another result is that pre-service teachers knowledges are by rote of mathematical concepts in 'Beytepe Monoray Problem'.