Investigating the reflection of 2018-2022 high school entrance exam mathematics questions on mathematics teaching

This study aims to examine teachers' opinions about the mathematics exam questions of the 2018-2022 High School Entrance Examination and to what extent the changing question structures are reflected in mathematics teaching. The data of the research was collected in the spring semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. This research was conducted with 10 middle school mathematics teachers, who taught 8th grade mathematics in public schools in Tokat. As a qualitative research, the data sources of the research were semi-structured one-on-one interviews, 8 th -grade fall semester mathematics exam questions, students' course notebooks of 8 th -grade fall semester, and the skill-based questions which teachers preferred to solve from the Z-books. The data obtained from one-on-one interviews and documents were examined one by one and codes and categories were created from common data. Then, the frequency levels showing how many teachers repeated the codes were determined as frequencies. The obtained codes and frequencies were shown in tables and these tables were interpreted in the findings section. The findings of the research showed that teachers thought LGS mathematics questions as difficult and distinctive questions. Furthermore, some of the teachers thought that skill- based questions develop students' high-level skills, but some of them thought that students who could not understand such questions were distracted from the course. The findings also displayed those teachers developed and updated themselves through skill-based questions, but they thought that these questions reduced their motivation and increased the pressure and workload on them. Furthermore, with the change in the examination system, teachers' teaching has changed, especially in teaching mathematics at the 8th grade level. Teachers gave the subjects and objectives as the basis for teaching 8 th -grade mathematics and focus on skill-based question solutions. It has been determined that teachers mostly were solving questions/problems by the characteristics of exercises and skill-based questions in the notes they take in their lessons and that they did not have their students take notes on skill-based questions and solve such questions from Z-books. Another finding obtained from the research was that although teachers included some questions that fit the characteristics of practice and skill-based questions in their written exams, they mostly did not ask skill-based questions in their exams.