Qualifications and opinions of mathematics teachers on writing activities

The aim of this study is to determine mathematics teachers' competencies and opinions about writing activities by developing a competency scale and an interview form. The quantitative study group of the research consisted of 178 mathematics teachers in public and private schools working as mathematics teachers in the Ministry of National Education during the 2022-2023 academic year in an eastern province of Turkey. The proficiency scale for writing activities was designed in two dimensions: "Implementation" and "Effective Use". The scale was designed as 35 items, and as a result of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) within the framework of validity and reliability study and construct validity, the items that reduced reliability were removed from the scale and the scale was reduced to 21 items. The developed scale was analyzed according to teachers' proficiency levels in writing activities and it was determined that 141 teachers had high proficiency level, 35 teachers had medium proficiency level and 2 teachers had low proficiency level. When the developed scale was analyzed in terms of reliability, Cronbach's Alpha internal reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.95, which was considered as 95% confidence level. In order to see the suitability of the data for factor analysis, KMO and Barlett test results were examined and KMO value was calculated as 0.957 and Barlett test result was calculated as 3764.736 (p<0.005). The qualitative part of the research was conducted in three stages. As the first stage, an interview form was developed by the researcher to determine teacher opinions. According to the value ranges of the competence scale developed in the quantitative part, three volunteer mathematics teachers were selected among the teachers with low, medium and high competence, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teachers about the writing activities in the second stage, and descriptive analysis was applied to analyse the data obtained from the teachers as a result of the interviews. As the third stage, teachers were made to implement writing activities and their opinions were taken again at the end of the activity. In this context, the first and last opinions were compared. As a result of these opinions, it was observed that the teachers had positive opinions about the writing activities and stated that they could be a support and learning tool for students. In addition to these, as a result of the findings obtained from the qualitative part, opinions such as that these activities are fun for students, realize a permanent learning, misconceptions can be detected and in-service training should be taken about these activities were stated, but contrary to these positive opinions, it was determined that only traditional writing activities (note-taking, summarizing, etc.) were preferred in the course, and contemporary writing activities (informative, meaningful writing, etc.) were not used because of the idea that it was time-consuming. Keywords: Opinion, opinion form, mathematics, mathematics teachers, writing for learning, scale-up development, writing activities