Content analysis of graduate thesis with qualitative research in the field of mathematics education between 2010-2020

The aim of this research is to determine the trends of master's and doctoral theses made with qualitative method in the field of mathematics education in Turkey between the years 2010-2020 and to make suggestions to the related field. For this purpose, 507 graduate thesis studies, which are accessible and suitable for the subject of the research, from the YÖK National Thesis Center were examined by descriptive content analysis method. Thesis year, university, institute, type of thesis, advisor title, subject tendency, qualitative research design, method characteristics (study group, sample size, sampling method, data collection method/tool, data diversity status, data analysis method), application time, Mathematics learning/sub-learning domain, reliability study and educational effects of the findings. The Thesis Review Form, which was developed by utilizing the literature, was used to classify the related theses. The results of the research show that the most theses were published in 2019 and all theses were published in 62 different universities. When theses are examined in the context of university and institute, it is seen that the university that publishes the most theses in qualitative design is Middle East Technical University (METU), and the institute that publishes the most on this subject is the institute of educational sciences. It is among the results of this research that faculty members who hold the title of associate professor at the highest number of postgraduate theses studied in qualitative design are consulted. The most preferred qualitative research design in theses was the case study design. As a data collection tool, semi-structured interviews were used the most. As a data collection method, it was seen that document analysis was mostly used. It was concluded that most of the theses chose the study group between 1 and 10 people, mostly teachers were preferred, and criterion sampling was mostly used as the sampling method. Data diversification was performed in 64% of the examined theses. More than three quarters of the theses included validity and reliability studies. In addition, it was observed that more than half of the studies examined did not provide any information about the application times. In the researches, the most preferred method in the analysis of the qualitative data obtained was the content analysis method. The theses examined according to the subject tendency were gathered under twenty-five categories, and the most studied categories were the "student/teacher/parent opinion" category and the "in-class mathematical applications/teaching process review" category. It was seen that 292 of the theses examined in the context of mathematics learning and sub-learning area were not related to mathematics learning and sub-learning area. The remaining theses are classified according to middle school mathematics learning/sub-learning domain and high school mathematics learning/sub-learning domain. It has been found that most of the studies are done in the field of numbers and operations from the secondary school mathematics learning areas, and the most in the field of fractions from the sub-learning areas. It was seen that most of the studies were done in the fields of numbers and algebra from high school mathematics learning areas, and the most studies were done in the field of functions from the sub-learning areas. Keywords: Qualitative Research, Mathematics Education, Descriptive Content Analysis