Examining the pedagogical content knowledge of prospective mathematics teachers on the subject of limits

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of prospective mathematics teachers on the subject of limits, based on the two components of PCK: the knowledge of student understanding and the knowledge of instructional strategies. The research sample comprises 33 fourth-year prospective Mathematics teachers (known hereafter as Mathematics Teacher Candidates or MTCs). As a data collection, a tool PCK test was used and the PCK test contains seven questions, including questions related to the misconceptions of students about limits. The MTCs were asked to identify inaccurate answers to each question, to state the causes of the mistakes and to design an instructional process to eliminate these mistakes. A descriptive analysis technique was used to analyze the data. Based on the ‘knowledge of student understanding’ component, it was observed that the MTCs could not find the reasons underlying the mistakes, even though they could determine the student's mistakes. On the other hand, based on the ‘knowledge of instructional strategies’ component, it was seen that most of the MTCs did not fully express their process in correcting the students' mistakes or only gave general answers. It was seen that there were deficiencies in both knowledge components.