Investigation of Mathematics Teachers’ Awareness of Developing Mathematical Communication Skills

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate mathematics teachers’ awareness of developing students’ mathematical communication skills. The study was designed qualitatively in which the data was collected through clinical interviews. The participants of this study was ten middle school mathematics teachers. Data was analyzed qualitatively by using qualitative data analysis technique that consists of three phases suggested by Miles and Huberman (2015). According to the findings, all the participants were aware that mathematics is a language. However, just two of them were adequate in explaining the properties and structure of this language by addressing its syntax and semantics. Another finding of this study was that all the participants believed that mathematics teachers must be a model for their students by using the language of mathematics effectively. Besides this the participants were lacking of what their responsibilities are about developing students’ mathematical communication skills.