The effect of mathematical modeling education on primary school teacher candidates' problem solving skills and attitudes towards mathematics (Sample of Manisa Celal Bayar University)

Curriculums are constantly renewed in line with today's needs. With the renewal of the curriculum, new skills are added to the targeted skills. Mathematical modeling skill has taken its place in mathematics education research since it includes the skills that the curriculum aims to gain. Mathematical modeling activities contribute to the development of mathematical abilities by supporting learning mathematics. It is very important that students work with mathematical modeling activities and have modeling skills from primary school (English & Watters, 2004). For this reason, primary school teachers have important duties to provide students with modeling skills. The aim of this study is to reveal the effect of mathematical modeling education on the problem solving skills and attitudes of prospective classroom teachers towards mathematics. In this study, a single group pre-test post-test experimental design, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The participants of the study are 12 primary school teacher candidates. The data collection process was carried out online with Microsoft Teams due to the COVID-19 pandemic conditions. In the first week of the six-week mathematical modeling training, the pre-test, the Attitudes towards Mathematics Scale (ABEMTO) and the Problem Solving Achievement Test (PCBT) were applied to the prospective classroom teachers. It was stated to the pre-service classroom teachers that they should not get help while solving PCBT and that they should solve it in a way that primary school students can understand without establishing equations. Afterwards, there was a four-week implementation period in which mathematical modeling activities were introduced and implemented. Before starting the application, the primary school teacher candidates were divided into groups of three. These groups were formed by the researcher based on the letter grades of the primary school teacher candidates in the Basic Mathematics Course. In the sixth and last week of the study, ABEMTO and PBCT were applied as the posttest. Primary school teacher candidates were reminded again that they should not get help while solving PCBT and that they should solve it in a way that primary school students can understand without using equations, and they were warned that they should solve it without looking at the answers they gave to the pre-test.12 classroom teacher candidates who participated in the research completed the data collection tools completely. As a result of the analysis of the collected data, it was seen that the mathematical modeling education improved the problem solving skills of the primary school teacher candidates in a positive way. While the mathematical modeling education had a positive effect on the problem solving steps of the pre-service teachers, the steps of understanding the problem and implementing the plan, it did not have an effect on the steps of planning and controlling. At the same time, it was seen that mathematical modeling education did not affect the problem solving skills of prospective classroom teachers according to gender, type of high school they graduated from, Basic Mathematics course grade in primary school and GANO. It was also observed that mathematical modeling activities did not affect the attitudes of prospective classroom teachers towards mathematics.