Investigation of middle school mathematics teachers' views on philosophy of mathematics and in-class practices

The participant group of this research, which aims to reveal the views of middle school mathematics teachers about the philosophy of mathematics and the reflection of these views in classroom practices, consists of 7 teachers who work as secondary school mathematics teachers in schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Bolu. Teachers were chosen on a voluntary basis, based on easily accessible case sampling, one of the purposeful sampling methods. The research problems are: 1. What are the views of secondary school mathematics teachers about the philosophy of mathematics? 2. What are the reflections of the philosophical views of secondary school mathematics teachers on their classroom practices? For the first research problem, one-on-one interviews were conducted with the teachers in three sessions. For the second research problem, on the basis of volunteerism, the classroom practices of teachers named Ö3 and Ö7, who were interviewed before, were observed. It was found that the teachers accepted the existence of mathematical objects and produced thoughts that matched the codes of "universe" and "universe and mind" about the source of existence. In the process of knowledge construction, it was concluded that teachers mostly produce thoughts related to the codes of "experience, interest/curiosity, openness to development, accumulation, intuition/doubt" and "need/practice". Teachers with code names Ö1, Ö2, Ö4 and Ö5 stated that there will be no radical change in mathematics, teacher with code name Ö6 stated that the knowledge available under current conditions is absolutely correct, but there may be radical changes in case of change of conditions, teacher with code name Ö1 said that the existing patterns will not change, Ö3 and Ö7 codes. Teachers, on the other hand, think that mathematical knowledge can change. It was found that all teachers emphasized the aspect of mathematics that is affected by society, individual and culture. It was found that the teacher named Ö3 did not reflect the values of personal mathematics philosophy in the classroom practice, a discrete view of mathematics was formed in the classroom practices, the teacher named Ö7 reflected the values compatible with his personal philosophy of mathematics in his class, and a connected image of mathematics was formed in the classroom. Possible reasons for teachers' inability to reflect their personal mathematics philosophies on classroom practices can be investigated.