An Investigation on How Prospective Mathematics Teachers Design a Lesson Plan

One of the components of pedagogical content knowledge is the knowledge required for designing a mathematics lesson. So as to obtain an effective teaching, it is necessary to prepare mathematics lesson plan. Lesson plans help teachers to document their ideas on teaching and share and/or use them after being adjusted according to students and teaching environment for upcoming years. The aim of this study is to investigate how prospective secondary mathematics teachers design lesson plans by using their pedagogical content knowledge. We have conducted this qualitative study with 60 prospective secondary mathematics teachers studying a five-year teacher education program at the Secondary Science and Mathematics Education department of a state university in Turkey. We have analyzed the lesson plans of prospective secondary mathematics teachers. We have also interviewed the eight of prospective teachers. The findings suggest that the prospective teachers preferred to use student-centered and technology-based teaching activities while designing their lesson plans. Prospective teachers also took into consideration the students’ understandings and prior knowledge in the process of designing lesson plans. We have found out that the reason why the prospective teachers experienced difficulties is because their mathematical content knowledge regarding the conceptions included in the curriculum is not appropriate