The effect of a professional development program prepared in the field of classroom norms on teachers' mathematical practices

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effect of a professional development program prepared in the field of classroom norms on teachers' mathematical practices. Forty five teachers took part in the professional development program and the mathematical practices of 4 teachers were analyzed for the research purpose. These four teachers? mathematics lessons were video-recorded before and after taking the training regarding classroom norms. The analysis was carried out on videos to find out the extent to which teachers value producing multiple solution methods, demand explanations and justifications, question the correctness of the answers and encourage listening to each other before and after the training. Further to this analysis, the teachers? lessons were analyzed in terms of the types of dialogs occurred between the teachers and the students and for that purpose the dialogue maps of each lesson was constructed. The findings showed that, after taking part in the program, the teachers began to encourage students to produce more alternative solution methods, demand more justifications and explanations, encourage more listening to each other and question the correctness of answers in a greater deal. The findings also showed that, after the training, teachers-students interactions changed dramatically in that teachers started to have much more interaction with (different) students whilst discussing an issue. With the training, students hence became more active and took part in more discussions. Consequently, it is determined that teachers started to create a classroom culture in line with the overarching goals of new elementary curriculum.