The examining of views pre-service mathematic teachers philosophical thoughts about the nature of mathematics

The views of mathematics educators on the nature of mathematics directly affect the methods and techniques, behaviours in the classroom, the formation of learning-teaching and evaluation processes, students' attitudes and achievements towards mathematics. For this reason, it is important to determine the opinions of teachers and prospective mathematic teachers, and to change the beliefs which affect those opinions in a negative way. With this study, it was aimed to analyse the views of prospective mathematic teachers about the nature of mathematics. The sample of this study, in which mixed method model was adopted, consists of primary school mathematics teacher candidates studying in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades of a state university in the Western Black Sea Region in the 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the study was designed using the easily accessible case sampling model of purposeful sampling model. The data were collected by applying the scale of determining the philosophical thoughts on the nature of mathematics to 136 prospective teachers and the opinion form developed by the researcher by taking expert opinions to 115 prospective teachers. SPSS 22.0 package program was used in the analysis of the data collected through the questionnaire and percentage, frequency, arithmetic mean, independent t-test and one way analysis variance were used. On the other hand, the data obtained from the opinion form were analysed by descriptive analysis and content analysed technique. With respect to the findings of this study, it was concluded that there were no significant differences in the opinions of prospective teachers on the nature of mathematics in terms of gender and grade level variables and that, more than half (%53) of prospective teachers had semi-experimentalist philosophical view. Besides, it was found that the majority of the prospective teachers thought that mathematics was both invented and discovered, and that mathematical knowledge was acquired later and could change. As a result of the opinions of prospective teachers; it was concluded that the theme of making life easier for the purpose of mathematics, the theme of accumulation for the formation of mathematical knowledge, and the themes of science and life for the definition of mathematics become prominent. According to the findings of the research, some suggestions were made to the research. Keywords: The nature of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, prospective mathematics teachers.