Investigation of the effect of pre-service mathematics teachers' prior knowledge on learning process of the concept of function

This research explores the effect of pre-service mathematics teachers? prior knowledge on learning process of the concept of function which is taught in abstract mathematics course in the first year of the undergraduate education. During the data analysis period of the research, the grounded theory techniques are used. For data collection, semi-structured interviews were made with six pre-service mathematics teachers. During the interviews, questions about the concepts of domain, codomain, image, one-to-one (injective) function, onto (surjective) function, composite function, inverse image and inverse of the function were asked to the pre-service mathematics teachers in order to investigate the effect of the prior knowledge. Gathered data was analyzed and interpreted together with the answer papers, using the grounded theory techniques. The results of the research show that the prior knowledge of pre-service mathematics teachers effects the learning process and this efficacy varies upon the character of the prior knowledge. The interviews with pre-service mathematics teachers show that there are many positive effects such as facilitating understanding, forming a basis, gaining the ability of inquisition, on the other hand if the prior knowledge is not adequate, then it effects negatively making complications on the learning process. Moreover, the obtained results state that prior knowledge provides benefit partially by giving idea about understanding of high level knowledge and mathematical expressions.