Determining Elementary School Mathematics Teachers’ Awareness of Students’ Misconceptions on the Angle Concept

This study aims to detect elementary school mathematics teachers’ awareness of students’ misconceptions of the angle concept. Sixteen mathematics teachers working at eight different elementary schools in Yozgat, Turkey, voluntarily participated in this study. Teachers completed a questionnaire consisting of two main components; namely, “demographic information” and “awareness of misconceptions”, and the gathered data were analysed with content analysis. This analysis was performed by two researchers, and their inter-rater agreement was calculated as 0.88. We found that all of the teachers in our sample were only able to provide a static definition of the angle concept in their classes and they encountered challenges in determining students’ misconceptions on the angle concept. To assist students to overcome their misconceptions on the angle concept, the teachers in our sample indicated that they could employ several teaching methods including re-explaining, mentioning several misconceptions in addition to the static definition of the angle concept, and using concrete materials for teaching the angle concept. Based on these findings, we recommend further investigation of teaching practices in this regard and if found valid, an in-service teacher training program should be implemented. In this way mathematics teachers in Turkey will be enabled to create teaching activities that address students’ misconceptions of the angle concept