Author
Faculty member, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shahid Chamran University, Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran
Abstract
This study was conducted to find out how fifth grade elementary school teachers’ knowledge and understanding correspond with theoretical principles. In addition, the difficulties they think exist in teaching math to their students as well as the students weaknesses in learning basic skills to solve math problems were also investigated. 731 fifth grade elementary schools teachers, were selected as subjects in this study, 389 men and 372 women. To survey their attitudes, a preliminary questionnaire conainting five factors was constructed and its validity was ascertained. As a result of a factor analysis, the five factors were reduced to four. This was the final instrument to be used to test the hyphotheses of this study. The results showed that teachers’ attitudes toward the factors were in accordance with theoretical bases found in the literature. Moreover, a significant difference was found between men and women regarding the difficulties they face in teaching math to their students. Women showed better attitudes toward this factor than men. But, there was no significant difference -bctween men and women regarding the use of teaching strategies and students math skills. Both groups believed that in order to be able to teach math effectively, the student must first show mastery of basic skills. The results also indicated that in order to improve the students weaknesses to learn math, the current teaching strategies must be reexamined. Teachers believed that the textbook in terms of its volume is reasonable, but the variety of subjects they must teach are too numerous.
Keywords
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