The Strategies Used by Prospective Primary School Teachers in the Process of Problem Solving: The Case of Routine Problem Solving

The study is aimed to reveal the statuses of prospective primary school teachers relevant to problem solving processes in general sense, it is actually aiming to determine the strategies they use in this process. The study had been realized qualitatively by 126 participants studying at third grade of primary school teaching department of a state university’s faculty of education. The data, obtained through the examination of the solution of a routine problem in primary school level directed to them, has been analyzed descriptively under stages by the problem solving process of Polya. The results indicate that they are generally using the strategies of guessing and checking, systematic listing and using equations and sometimes they prefer reasoning and using diagrams