Middle School Mathematics Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Regarding Student Knowledge about Quadrilaterals

Abstract

Pedagogical content knowledge is consisted of two components: student knowledge, teaching
strategies. Student knowledge was defined to sub-categories as connecting prior knowledge to new knowledge,
noticing students’ mistakes, identifying students’ difficulties of understanding. The aim of this study is to
examine middle school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in terms of student knowledge
regarding quadrilaterals. Interview method was used. 30 middle school mathematics teachers working at 12
different schools in Turkey participated. Content analysis was used. Results show that teachers teach lessons
taking into consideration their students’ previous knowledge and new knowledge they do by “reminding
quadrilaterals students previously learnt” or “making association between similar quadrilaterals. The teachers
pointed out the students’ mistakes about quadrilaterals were group under three headings: mistakes regarding
defining quadrilaterals, mistakes regarding visual property, classification of quadrilaterals, and family relation
within quadrilaterals. The students’ difficulties are summarized in two groups: difficulties identified related with
trapezoid, difficulties identified related with other quadrilaterals. Different studies can be carried out on different
pedagogical content knowledge components to examine the relationship between the results.