Analysing mathematics teachers' professional development on mathematical literacy within the framework of documentational approach

Mathematical literacy is seen as a field of study for the world of mathematics education that has been studied for over two decades. Among the 72 countries participating in the PISA applications organized by the OECD, Turkey's ranking in the 50th place in 2015 had a great impact throughout the country. It is particularly noteworthy that this ranking is even lower than the ranking in 2003, the first year that Turkey took the exam. As a result, many studies have been carried out on mathematical literacy. When the studies on mathematical literacy in the literature are examined, it is seen that most of the studies are demographic studies on the students who participated in the PISA exams and their families. These studies allow us to form an idea about the students taking the exams. However, considering the current situation in Turkey and the results obtained in PISA, it is thought that studies should be carried out to increase the success of mathematical literacy. This thesis study was carried out in this context. In this research, it is investigated how mathematics teachers reflect the mathematics literacy education they received during their undergraduate education to their own teaching and how their professional development in the context of mathematical literacy is. In the research, the developmental research method (longitudinal study), which is a method based on the qualitative research approach, is used. Developmental research is used to examine the differences in the feelings, thoughts or behaviors of individuals of different ages or different cultures, or the changes and developments in the emotions, thoughts or behaviors of the same individuals at different times in their lives. A case study was chosen as the research strategy. Purposive sampling method was used in the selection of the participants of the study, as suggested in qualitative studies. Criterion sampling method was also adopted from purposive sampling methods. The participants of the research are four mathematics teachers who are in the last year of undergraduate education in the 2016-2017 academic year, who took the courses "Field Papers in Mathematics Education" and "Teaching Practice" and were appointed as teachers to public schools affiliated to the Ministry of Education in 2018. The 2016-2017 semester, which is the last year of the undergraduate education of the participants, started in the spring semester. First of all, the mathematics literacy education given during undergraduate education was followed. Since there may be aspects that may affect the results of the research, each lesson was followed week by week by taking the researchers' notes. Afterwards, the teaching practice files of the pre-service teachers who took the course were collected and analyzed. At this stage, the files of all teacher candidates who took the course were examined. However, after the participants were determined, the files of the selected participants were included in the study. The data collection process was suspended for one year in order to pass the pre-service teachers, the appointment period and the first nomination training periods. In the 2018-2019 period, short interviews were held with teachers who had previously participated in the research and were appointed to which cities each of them was assigned and what they thought about continuing the research. In this process, the participants who will continue the research together were determined. In the 2019-2020 period, four teachers who volunteered to participate in the research went to the city where they worked, in order to see closely whether the environments they worked in had approximately equal opportunities and the level of students. First, a preliminary interview about mathematical literacy, then lesson preparation interviews and then lesson observations were made with each of the teachers. After each lesson observation, short interviews were held with the teachers about the situations in the lesson. Finally, the conclusions reached by each teacher and the researcher based on their analysis were discussed and approval was obtained regarding the accuracy of these results. Each participant teacher's lesson was observed for 25 hours, during the lesson observation, the researcher sat in the back rows like a student and took notes and did not interfere with the process. As a result, it was seen that the participants had changing and constant schemas during the process of becoming a teacher from teacher candidates. It has been observed that the schemas serving the competencies of reasoning, strategy development for problem solving and using mathematical tools and equipment remained stable. However, it was noteworthy that the schemas serving the participants' previous competences in using symbolic and formal language, representing and modeling were not seen in the process after becoming a teacher. However, there were also schemas that developed after becoming a teacher, but that could not be directly associated with mathematical competencies.