INVESTIGATING TEACHING PRACTICES FOR ALGEBRAIC EXPRESSIONS WITHIN A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY

Abstract

As effective teaching practices support students’ learning; it is essential to investigate teachers’ teaching practices. It can also shed light on the causes of students’ difficulties. In this regard, proposing teaching practices might be important as the practices can give insight about what is going on in teaching process. Thus, the aim of this study is to extract the practices by focusing on the teachers’ actions during the teaching of operations with algebraic expressions. Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) model which is a practice-based approach to the knowledge concept is used as a framework in this study. Thus, this study focuses on teaching practices of operations with algebraic expressions (addition, subtraction, and multiplication). Data were collected from two middle school mathematics teachers’ instructions. The two teachers were the cases in this qualitative research and the data were analyzed by compare and contrast method. The practices that are found in the study are: defining the concept of term, like term, constant term, and coefficient; using equal sign; using analogies to explain addition and subtraction; using algebra tiles; providing mathematical explanations for distributive property; and noticing students’ misconceptions in simplification and equivalence of algebraic expression. The results suggest that the conceptual teacher knowledge influences teaching practices positively and teacher knowledge should be used in appropriate pedagogical organization to develop teaching practices.