Revealing the thoughts of the secondary shcool mathematics pre-service teachers on mathematical modelling

Purpose of this work is to discover the feelings on the mathematical modelling of the secondary school mathematics pre-service teachers who have never taken lessons on the mathematical modelling before. Firstly, to reveal the thoughts of the pre-service teachers on mathematical modelling, a mathematical modelling activity is applied. Mathematical modelling activity consists of four warm-up and one modelling problems. Modelling activity is prepared by taking into consideration the modelling activities used by Lesh and Doerr (2003) in their researches. This work is an example of qualitative case research. 14 teacher candidates who study secondary school mathematics education department of Faculty of Education at Abant İzzet Baysal University constitute the work group of the research. After the modelling activity, focus group discussions are held with teacher candidates using half-structured interview questions. As a result of the analysis of interview records, pre-service teachers stated that mathematical modelling activity differs from the class problems in terms of including daily life problems, subjectivity, value judgement, choices and uncertainity. Students can discover and question the position of mathematics in their daily life with mathematical modelling activity. They can use and develope high level thinking techniques in solving daily life problems. Besides, trying to solve modelling problems in cooperation with their friends make student discuss modelling and get more reliable results. Futhermore, working in cooperation on problems make teacher candidates feel the positive properties like brain storming on a problem together, make an effort and enjoy their work. Pre-service teachers stated that because modelling problems are exact daily life problems and they are not used to that king of problems, they have experienced difficulties. Because preferences were at the foreground in the problems, resulting in uncertainities in their decisions, they couldn?t be sure of their decisions. With doubts resulting from uncertainities, teacher candidates have rought time in interest computations included in modelling.22258 At the end of the process taken through this thesis work, pre-service teachers stated that practicing mathematical modelling via projects and performance tasks will be beneficial. Through projects and performance tasks, connection of the mathematics taught in the class with the daily life can be handled concretely. Thus, it can be provided that student will be more volunteered to solve their daily life problems by multi way thinking and that students acquire high level thinking. Key words: Mainstream, Inclusive education, Special education support services, resource room