The comparisons of 5th grades, pre and in service elementary school teachers? problem solving strategies in operation

The concept of education that is shaped depending on necessities has started to be transformed into a different one than its traditional structure in order to meet the changing global requirements. Education, with its systematic structure, is going through a transformation due to the paid changes in technology. Within this transformation, the main objective of education is no longer to collect information but rather to raise such individuals that can come up with efficient solutions to their problems by making good use of information. The easiest way to tackle with life is by learning how to solve problems. In order to acquire an efficient problem-solving behaviour, in other words, to make problem-solving easier, problem-solving strategies should be applied to the problem appropriately. This is a descriptive study conducted in order to determine the general strategies of students, prospective teachers and teachers in solving the four arithmetical operations. The study group consists of 264 students of 5th grade at the primary schools in the city centre of Kütahya, 216 prospective teachers who had the course of mathematics instruction from three different universities and 149 primary school teachers working in the city centre of Kütahya. As the data gathering tool, the researcher used a problem solving inventory which was composed of 10 questions and whose validity and reliability studies had been carried out. This inventory was conducted on the study group, the solutions of students, prospective teachers and teachers were classified according to the strategies and then were analysed. The resultsof the research are as follows: the strategies used in solving the four arithmetical operations showed significant difference depending on individual status (student, prospective teacher, teacher). While, in solving the four arithmetical operations, students generally prefer the strategy of writing a mathematical sentence, prospective teachers generally prefer using a variable (building an equation) and teachers generally prefer drawing a diagram..Key Words: Mathematics, problem, problem solving, problem solving strategies.