The influence of a Professional Development Program related to students' mathematical difficulties on techers' ways of handling difficulties

The purpose of this study is to reveal the influence of a Professional Development Program related to students? mathematical difficulties on teachers? ways of handling difficulties. The study is carried out with 3 elementary classroom teachers and 3 elementary mathematics teachers working at different schools in Gaziantep. Participants were given a professional development program during four weeks (totally 16 hours). Teachers? mathematics lessons were videotaped regularly both pre and post of the professional development program. The video recordings were transcripted. Sections were determined which includes students? mathematics difficulties. Teachers? interventions in these sections were coded into eleven mutually exclusive categories: i) ignoring the difficulty, ii) warning the student(s), iii) giving the correct answer, iv) giving a hint, v) repeating the question, vi) providing explanation, vii) cognitive conflict, viii) introducing the difficulty as a class debate, ix) redirecting the question, x) asking why and xi) other. When the findings are examined in a general view, the data indicated that before the professional development program the teachers mostly tend to use the interventions of warning the students, giving them hints and providing them with explanations and they were inclined to ignore the reasons beneath the difficulties that come out and to make the student with the difficulty responsible for eliminating his own difficulty. But, after the professional development program, a rise has been observed in the frequency of such alternative intervention types as redirecting the question to other students, introducing the difficulty as a class debate, cognitive conflict. Therefore, it has been diagnosed that the professional development program has been effective in the way that teachers? becoming aware of student difficulties and in the way of their increasing the number and the types of interventions.Key Words: Mathematical Student Difficulties; Teacher?s Intervention; Professional Development Program