Student?s difficulties in the process of mathematics teaching faced by classroom teachers and types of intervention used

The purpose of this thesis is to find out the reasons for the emergence of misconceptions that math teachers face and the types of interventions the teachers employ in the course of their instruction. This study is a qualitative research and a case study. A total of four teachers participated in this study and their classroom practices were videotaped two times: before and after education. The videotapes were then analyzed in order to find out the reasons for the student?s difficulties and the types of interventions the teacher utilized in the course of instruction. This analysis also helped us compare and contrast the instructions taking place before and after education. The data analysis resulted in the exploration of a number of categories on the reasons for the student?s difficulties and types of teacher?s interventions made. The results indicated that the reasons for the emergence of students? difficulties before and after education were resulted not only from the students themselves, but also the teacher?s interventions and their guidance. The analysis of teacher?s interventions indicated that teachers utilized such interventions as warning, repeating the question or the explanation, telling the truth, questioning, presenting class discussion and ignoring. The findings also indicated that the main factor for the emergence of students? difficulties were the students themselves. Furthermore, the data indicated that the teacher?s interventions and their guidance were also one of the factors leading to the emergence of students? difficulties. The results also showed that before education the teachers tended to utilize such interventions as ignoring, telling the truth and presenting the class discussion. But this tendency changed after education and turned out to be telling the truth and repeating the question or the explanation.