Knowledge Economy Skills and their Relationship to Mathematical Culture among Secondary School Mathematics Teachers

The aim of the current research is to study the relationship between the skills of knowledge economy and mathematical culture for male and female mathematics teachers for the secondary stage. The knowledge economy consists of (34) items, and a measure of mathematical culture of (23) items. Appropriate statistical analyzes were conducted and the psychometric properties of the observation card and scale were verified, and by adopting the appropriate statistical tools to analyze the results, I came up with the following: 1. Mathematics teachers do not have knowledge economy skills. 2. Mathematics teachers have a mathematical culture. 3. There is a positive correlation between the skills of knowledge economy and mathematical culture among male and female mathematics teachers in the research sample.

Novel derivation of equations of motion for a body falling with resistance

The motion equations of a body under gravity and resistance linearly dependent on speed are usually analysed by solving differential equations. In this paper we report a derivation not explicitly involving differential equations but instead based on some elementary mathematical operations. The derivation uses only knowledge covered in a typical secondary school mathematics syllabus.

INVESTIGATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION MATHEMATICS CURRICULUM IN THE CONTEXT OF 21ST CENTURY SKILLS

With the transition to the digital age, changes have emerged in the skills expected from the individuals of the 21st century, and accordingly, the preparation of curricula to develop these skills has become the main goal of all countries in the world. In our country, studies have been carried out to develop curricula in this direction, and with this research, it is aimed to examine the secondary education mathematics (2010, 2011, 2013 and 2017) and geometry (2011) teaching programs in the context of 21st century skills. The research is a survey study aimed at examining the secondary school mathematics and geometry course curriculum in terms of 21st century skills. As the data source of the research, secondary school mathematics course and secondary school geometry course curricula shared on the official website of the Ministry of National Education were taken. Document analysis method was used in the collection and analysis of data in the research in which these teaching programs were accepted as documents. Curriculums specified within the scope of document analysis were analyzed with descriptive analysis method based on 21st century skills within the scope of Partnership for 21st Century Learning [P21]. The skills included in the curricula were supported by direct quotations from the curricula. According to the results of this research, it has been determined that the curriculum is not qualified to cover all 21st century skills. The fact that media literacy, leadership and responsibility skills are not included in the curriculum, and that the evaluation elements of the programs are insufficient in the context of 21st century skills are among the remarkable results. The findings obtained at the end of the research were discussed with the support of the literature and suggestions were made for future research.

Inferential Reasoning of Secondary School Mathematics Teachers on the Chi-Square Statistic

Statistics education has investigated how to promote formal inferential reasoning from informal inferential reasoning. Nevertheless, there is still a need for proposals that explore and progressively develop inferential reasoning of students and teachers. Concerning this, the objective of this article is to characterize the inferential reasoning that secondary school mathematics teachers show in the practices that they develop to solve problems regarding the Chi-square statistic. To achieve this, we use theoretical and methodological notions introduced by the onto-semiotic approach of mathematics knowledge and instruction. In particular, we have taken a theoretical proposal of levels of inferential reasoning for the Chi-square statistic. Based on the results, the main conclusion was that the proposal above effectively predicted the teachers’ practices, allowing us to distinguish characteristic elements of the levels of inferential reasoning.

The Relationship between Technology Literacies and Proactive Personalities of Secondary School Mathematics Teachers

The aim of this study is to determine the level of technology literacy and proactive personality of secondary school mathematics teachers, the relationship between technology literacy and proactive personalities, and how much of the proactive personality is explained by the technology literacy, according to the perceptions of secondary school mathematics teachers. The study was designed around a relational survey model, which is a quantitative research technique. The population of the study consisted of mathematics teachers working in secondary schools in Turkey and the sample was 380 secondary school mathematics teachers selected by simple random sampling method. Technology Literacy Scale and Proactive Personality Scale were used as data collection instruments. Descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analyses were used to analyse the data. The secondary school mathematics teachers' perceptions about technology literacy and proactive personality were found to be high. In addition, there was a moderate level positive and significant correlation between technology literacy and proactive personality of the secondary school mathematics teachers. Finally, the proactive personality of secondary school mathematics teachers explained their technology literacy at 30.7% level.

A Study on the Relationship between Mobbing and Professional Burn out Perceptions of Secondary School Mathematics Teachers

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between mobbing perception and job burnout of secondary school mathematics teachers. Another subject of the study is to find out whether mobbing and burnout perception differs according togender, marital status, teachers’ professional experience, educational background, staff position, and school type variables. The demographical information form developed by the researchers, Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey, developed by Maslach and Jackson (1981),and Mobbing Scale developed by Cemaloğlu and Ertürk (2007) were used as data collection tools. The study was conducted using the survey method. The study participants included 243 mathematics teachers working in public and private secondary schools in a city centre of a province in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Although the study findings of burnout perceptions of mathematics teachers do not differ significantly according to the variables of gender, and educational background, they differ according to the variables of marital status, professional experience, staff position, and school type. Mobbing perceptions of mathematics teachers differ according to sub-levels of all variables but the variable of gender and staff position. In addition, a significant relationship has been identified between the mobbing and burnout perceptions of secondary school mathematics teachers. In addition, it has been determined that mathematics teachers’ mobbing perceptions are significant predictors of burnout perceptions.

Implementing Confidence Assessment in Low-Stakes, Formative Mathematics Assessments

Confidence assessment (CA) involves students stating alongside each of their answers a confidence rating (e.g. 0 low to 10 high) to express how certain they are that their answer is correct. Each student’s score is calculated as the sum of the confidence ratings on the items that they answered correctly, minus the sum of the confidence ratings on the items that they answered incorrectly; this scoring system is designed to incentivize students to give truthful confidence ratings. Previous research found that secondary-school mathematics students readily understood the negative-marking feature of a CA instrument used during one lesson, and that they were generally positive about the CA approach. This paper reports on a quasi-experimental trial of CA in four secondary-school mathematics lessons (N = 475 students) across time periods ranging from 3 weeks up to one academic year, compared to business-as-usual controls. A meta-analysis of the effect sizes across the four schools gave an aggregated Cohen’s d of –0.02 [95% CI –0.22, 0.19] and an overall Bayes Factor B01 of 8.48. This indicated substantial evidence for the null hypothesis that there was no difference between the attainment gains of the intervention group and the control group, relative to the alternative hypothesis that the gains were different. I conclude that incorporating confidence assessment into low-stakes classroom mathematics formative assessments does not appear to be detrimental to students’ attainment, and I suggest reasons why a clear positive outcome was not obtained.