Pre-service Mathematics Teachers’ Opinions about FATİH Project and Technology Use in Mathematics Education

Main Article Content

Mehmet Fatih Öçal, Mertkan Şimşek

Abstract

FATİH Project is one of the most extensive movements on the way of integrating technology into schools. One crucial factor for FATİH Project to be successful is teachers who are the first degree practitioners of the Project. At this point, pre-service teachers who are the near future’s teachers need to know the requirements of the Project. Therefore, the necessity of providing trainings intending FATİH Project during undergraduate education is heated-debate to discuss. Another point under discussion is to provide domain specific (mathematics domain in this study) training for teachers. With this respect, the purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service mathematics teachers’ opinions about technology use and FATİH Project before and after given preparatory training towards it. The participants of this study with qualitative paradigm were composed of 15 pre-service elementary school mathematics teachers who were enrolled in the fourth grade in a public university. FATİH Project preparatory training was prepared according to the in-service training provided by Ministry of National Education for teachers and was designed in line with mathematics lessons specifically. This training lasted 10 weeks with practical applications. An open-ended opinion questionnaire was subjected to pre-service teachers before and after the training. In addition, each participant was interviewed. The findings gathered before and after training were compared. According to the results of the study, it was observed that the definitions of pre-service teachers for FATİH Project were deepened and they used concepts specific to mathematics lesson. In addition, they reported opinions about the positive, negative aspects of and applicability for the Project. Lastly, it was observed that pre-service teachers’ awareness towards technologies such as software, hardware and educational portals that were used specifically to mathematics increased in mathematics lessons.

Article Details

Section
Articles