Students Perspectives in Mathematics

Mathematics is one of the important tools we use in solving the problems in our daily lives as much as we use in science (Baykul, 2000). There is no doubt that teachers play a significant role in mathematics teaching. Taking into account the importance of mathematics and mathematics education, the opinions of secondary school students on mathematics teachers and their attitudes in mathematics classes form the basis of this study. The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between secondary school students and mathematics teachers by examining the attitudes of secondary school students in mathematics lessons and their opinions about mathematics teachers. The study was carried out with a total of 60 students, 30 girls and 30 boys in Grade 7 and Grade 8 in a secondary school in Bafra District of Samsun Province during the first semester of the 2017-2018 academic year. This study is based on the case study, one of the quantitative research methods. During the study conducted for 8 weeks, "Teacher Evaluation Survey" published by MoNE (Ministry of National Education) and "Mathematical Attitude Scale" developed by Baykul (2006) was applied to the students. The obtained data were analyzed by IBM SPSS 15.0 package program. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that there was no significant difference regarding the opinions of students towards their teachers and the attitudes of students in mathematics in terms of gender and class variables. Moreover, it was found that there was no relation between the attitudes towards mathematics and the opinions about the teacher. Students expressed positive opinions about their teachers such as teachers are allowing different ideas, encouraging learning, providing effective mathematics teaching and establishing good communication