Examining middle school mathematics teachers' perceptions of special field competency: A lesson study

Purpose of this study is to evaluate the Lesson Study Model (LS) that was designed for mathematics teachers to improve their special field competency perceptions. In addition, this study intends to identify how mathematics teachers' private field competency perceptions were changed after Lesson Study Model. Professional competency is defined as knowledge, skills and attitudes that have to be possessed by a teacher to perform effective teaching. These competencies are divided into two sections; as general competencies and as special field competencies. LS can be seen as a professional development model. Throughout this process a group of teachers who volunteered to participate in this LS study. They were involved in activities such as observations, discussions and critique of the lessons to become effective teachers of mathematics. And they work on this process very detailed to advance the lesson. The research was carried out in one of the southern cities in Turkey with 5 secondary school Math teachers. As a Japanese career development model, LS was completed in 3 turn by revision of research lectures. During the research all activities were recorded a video by the researcher. Having been made as a qualitative research model, semi-structured interview is used with five teachers in this research. In consequence of descriptive analyze of the data, it is found out that teachers could reflect their Math Private Field Competencies (MPFC) to the teaching after LS. These findings can be listed as; improving students all math skills by doing teamwork, using MPFC while prepearing their lesson after praxis, increasing using technology in teaching, using math knowledge. Generally, LS Model was commented positively. These comments are: an activer teaching process with LS, increasing the communications not only between students but also between students and teachers. On the other hand there is some negative findings of LS. These are listed as: the management does not lead towards find such long processed works, preperation part is hard, teachers has to sacrifice their free times, teachers can not gather everytime they have to. Some suggestions are offered in the light of these findings. These are; controlling how Teaching Profession General Competency (TPGC) is reflected to the teaching, examination teachers technological abilities with LS, searching how capable are the canditate math teacher of using LS consequently with the help of this study, using Lesson Study Method for Math teachers contributes their professional development a lot and by means of this method teachers can reflect MPFC to their teachings. Key Words: Lesson study, mathematics teaching, mathematics special field competency, professional competency