Equal Sign and Relational Thinking in Elementary Mathematics Textbooks

This paper intends that the determining of how and to what extend the use of equal sign and relational thinking are supported in the mathematics course books for the primary education and students work books taught from 1st grade to 5th grade in for the primary education. In this study, the document analysis approach, which is one of the method, qualitative research was used for the data collection. This contexts/samples including equal sign in course book were examined and in this procedure, the operations-equal-answer and non-standard context used by McNeil et al (2006) were adapted. After completing of coding for equal sign, the samples supporting the relational thinking were determined and these samples were coded under the principal titles. As a result, it is determined that the equal sign is excessively used in the four series of the primary education 1.-5. grades mathematics course books and student work books as operations-equality-answer and, in these context, the samples emphasizing the relational meaning of equal sign required level.